Keith Schooley, a former Merrill Lynch financial consultant trainee, has opened an official Facebook page for his book, Merrill Lynch: The Cost Could Be Fatal. The page is intended to promote his first-person account of the nine years he spent challenging the largest firm on Wall Street and to engage readers who believe employees should be able to report wrongdoing without sacrificing their careers.
The book’s relevance extends beyond one man’s experience. Schooley joined Merrill Lynch in July 1991, scored 93.2 percent on the Series 7 exam, and ranked among the top ten rookie producers in his division. Fourteen months later, he was out of the securities industry for good. His story raises questions about how financial firms handle internal complaints and whether the current system for resolving disputes fairly serves investors and employees.
The title of the book comes from a warning by Merrill Lynch’s own general counsel in a 1992 employee publication: allowing integrity to take second place to revenue would cost the firm more than dollars, because “the cost could be fatal.” Citing the firm’s written requirement that employees report improprieties to whatever level of management is necessary, Schooley wrote a four-page memo to his branch manager and then a 31-page letter to all thirteen members of the board of directors.
What followed, according to Schooley, included two internal investigations, inquiries by the SEC, the NYSE, the NASD, and two state insurance departments, his termination, a forced move into binding securities arbitration, a four-day hearing, and more than a decade of appeals. The arbitration panel awarded him nothing.
Schooley does not conceal that outcome. The book opens with a foreword by his former attorney, Stephen Jones, who states plainly that Schooley lost and argues that the real subject is not one man’s case but whether investors should have claims decided by arbitrators rather than juries. Jones tells readers that each of them becomes “one of the jurors he never had.” The book reconstructs the dispute from Schooley’s memos, letters, regulatory correspondence, recorded telephone conversations, and the transcript of the arbitration hearing, including testimony from the firm’s own compliance and legal executives.
The new Facebook page is part of an effort to bring this account to a wider audience. Readers who follow the case are asked to like and share the page, with each share potentially putting the story in front of people who have never heard of it. The book is also available for purchase through https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HKY222R6.
Schooley grew up in Oklahoma City, earned a B.B.A. from the University of Oklahoma and an M.B.A. from Oklahoma State University, and worked in oil and gas before turning to Wall Street. He lives in Enid, Oklahoma. The launch of the Facebook page signals that his account is moving from a personal memoir into a broader public conversation about accountability on Wall Street and the arbitration system that governs disputes.
