He also likes Merrill Lynch (nyse: MER - news - people ), thanks to its army of retail brokers and its stakes in investment manager BlackRock (nyse: BLK - news - people ) and in Bloomberg, the financial information giant.

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The firm generates cash to cover obligations 17 times over, a fact that gives BLK the wherewithal for a dividend hike in the near-term.

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Merrill was also mulling the sale of a piece of investment manager BlackRock (nyse: BLK - news - people ), in which it owns a 49.0% share, but no deal appears imminent.

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