A group of African-American brokers at Merrill Lynch are considering a lawsuit alleging the largest brokerage house in the US has failed to ...

A group of African-American brokers at Merrill Lynch are considering a lawsuit alleging the largest brokerage house in the US has failed to hire and promote blacks, according to reports in the US press.

Dan Sontag, head of the global private-client-advisory division, and Phil Sieg, managing director of strategic leadership and business development, met in mid December in New York with about 15 brokers in the US, according to Dow Jones Newswire.

They discussed alleged racial discrimination at Merrill's local branches, the report said.
The meeting focused on recommendations to stem discriminatory practices that were alleged in a lawsuit filed by George McReynolds, a financial advisor who has worked in Merrill's Nashville, Tennessee, office since 1983.

The McReynolds suit, filed in mid-November in federal court in Chicago, alleged that Merrill failed to hire and promote blacks, among similar allegations. Merrill, with more than 14,000 brokers, also targeted accounts and clients of African-American financial advisors and reassigned them to white brokers, the lawsuit alleged.

The lawsuit also said that 2 per cent of the company's brokers are African-American and that Merrill has experienced more than a 25 per cent attrition rate of African-American financial advisors over five years.

In early December, according to the Dow Jones report, Robert McCann, president of the global private-client unit at Merrill, sent a memo to employees detailing the company's diversity efforts. He also urged the company to "do a better job" of making the work force more diverse.