David H. Komansky, Global-Minded Chief of Merrill Lynch, Dies at 82

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David H. Komansky, Global-Minded Chief of Merrill Lynch, Dies at 82

Quite a few executives who have been employed or mentored by Mr. Komansky adopted him to Wall Street’s optimum echelons, among them, in addition to Mr. Gorman, Laurence D. Fink, the founder and main government of BlackRock, the world’s major asset supervisor and Andy Sieg, who runs Financial institution of America’s wealth administration division.

Mr. Komansky even befriended rivals, together with Henry M. Paulson Jr., the previous Treasury secretary and chief of Goldman Sachs. The two would joke about crisscrossing the globe to meet up with customers, in some cases landing in metropolitan areas in just times of each other.

“He was a quite challenging competitor who I however thought of a friend,” Mr. Paulson stated in an job interview. “His persons expertise were being legendary.”

David Herman Komansky was born on April 27, 1939 in Mount Vernon, N.Y. His father, William, a son of Russian Jewish immigrants, worked nights as a postal employee. His mom, Mae, arrived from a big Irish-Catholic household and later on converted to Judaism. Mr. Komansky saved a reminder of his humble roots on his desk: a picture of the tenement constructing on the Grand Concourse in which he grew up.

He took an strange route to the top. Soon after dropping out of the University of Miami, Mr. Komansky did stints in the Coast Guard and held odd work prior to likely to operate for a regional brokerage in New York.

He was employed by Merrill in 1968 as a monetary adviser trainee in Queens and began climbing the ranks, working income in Detroit and New York and then nationwide for Merrill’s personal consumer group.

After finishing a management application at Harvard College, Mr. Komansky was promoted by Daniel P. Tully, the chief executive at the time, to manage funds markets businesses, including equities and personal debt. He became president and chief working officer in January 1995 and chief executive in December 1996. He was named chairman the next spring.