Now that Enron's Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling have been convicted, the parade of well-dressed miscreants--the cable TV pioneers, the telecommunications executives, starbrokers and even a housekeeping diva who became the Gordon Gekkos for a whole new generation--is over.
Merrill may lose a few disgruntled super-star staffers to traditional brokers that remain offline though the number of such firms is likely to fall fast now that Merrill, the market-leader, has made its move.