too late.
That was the environment in which Darr arrived on Wall Street in June 1976. He got his start by grabbing the industryâs lowest professional rung, as a stockbroker trainee with Merrill Lynch & Company. The firm hired him to work in Boston but immediately shipped him to Merrillâs New York headquarters for two months of training.
Darr breezed through most of the topics easily by dint of his natural intellect. Although the class had its share of studious trainees, he gravitated toward a group who also caught on quickly. They were the ones itching to head out to a branch and start selling. Evenings among these trainees centered on bar-hopping and occasional marijuana parties. Many in the group struck up long-term friendships, and Darr was no exception.
At one Merrill-sponsored cocktail party, Darr met Wally Allen, a native of Enterprise, Alabama, who had joined the training program after a short career in the real estate mortgage business. The two stayed at the same hotel on Manhattanâs East Side and became fast friends.
One night, the two gathered in Allenâs room before another eveningâs carousing and started swapping stories about their backgrounds. Allen mentioned that he served with the army in the Seventh Psychological Operations Group, an intelligence unit based in Okinawa, Japan. The work he did as an analyst was classified, but Allen did not think it was very impressive. His biggest responsibility was acting as custodian of classified documents. But the biggest advantage of the detail, Allen said, was that it kept him out of Vietnam.
Well, Darr said, he
had
served in Vietnam. And like Allen, he worked in the intelligence business. In fact, the entire time he was in Southeast Asia, he always dressed as a civilian. Allen got the picture: Darr worked with some high-level intelligence group, perhaps the Central Intelligence Agency. Allen was surprised someone in that line of work was so open about it but figured Darr was trying to impress him.
It would be several years before Allen realized that everything Darr said that night was a lie. He had never been in Vietnam. He had never even worked with an intelligence division. There werenât many spies handling maintenance detail in Utah. It would prove to be just the first layer in Darrâs self-created mythology.
In 1977, after a few months as a broker, Darr tried for the big time. He saw that tax shelters were taking off as a business, and Merrill had one of the biggest departments on Wall Street. That, Darr decided, was the place to be.
After lobbying Jack Loughlin, the head of the department, Darr was hired as a product manager. In that job, he marketed specific types of partnerships.
Product managers never sold investments directly to the public. Instead, they traveled throughout the Merrill retail system, talking up the shelters in the hopes of persuading the brokers to sell them. For Darr, the job was remarkably like his fatherâs. Both traveled around the country representing particular products to retail salesmen. But instead of trying to persuade salesmen to offer Naturalizer shoes, Darr was trying to convince them to sell tax shelters.
Darr proved to be a master at sales. He was not the type to spend much time exploring the deep mechanics of how a particular tax shelter worked, but he always knew enough to persuade brokers to sell a deal. He also was one of the few marketers willing to stand up to arrogant investment bankers. If bankers made a shelter too complicated, he would tell them that they would confuse the brokers.
Darrâs style was effective; he worked hard, but never bored his colleagues by poring over the dry details of some business deal. Instead, Darr cracked them up with the latest bawdy joke or his dead-on impersonation of Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg. It was a glorious time for Darr. For the first time, big success seemed within his reach.
A few months after joining Merrillâs tax
That was the environment in which Darr arrived on Wall Street in June 1976. He got his start by grabbing the industryâs lowest professional rung, as a stockbroker trainee with Merrill Lynch & Company. The firm hired him to work in Boston but immediately shipped him to Merrillâs New York headquarters for two months of training.
Darr breezed through most of the topics easily by dint of his natural intellect. Although the class had its share of studious trainees, he gravitated toward a group who also caught on quickly. They were the ones itching to head out to a branch and start selling. Evenings among these trainees centered on bar-hopping and occasional marijuana parties. Many in the group struck up long-term friendships, and Darr was no exception.
At one Merrill-sponsored cocktail party, Darr met Wally Allen, a native of Enterprise, Alabama, who had joined the training program after a short career in the real estate mortgage business. The two stayed at the same hotel on Manhattanâs East Side and became fast friends.
One night, the two gathered in Allenâs room before another eveningâs carousing and started swapping stories about their backgrounds. Allen mentioned that he served with the army in the Seventh Psychological Operations Group, an intelligence unit based in Okinawa, Japan. The work he did as an analyst was classified, but Allen did not think it was very impressive. His biggest responsibility was acting as custodian of classified documents. But the biggest advantage of the detail, Allen said, was that it kept him out of Vietnam.
Well, Darr said, he
had
served in Vietnam. And like Allen, he worked in the intelligence business. In fact, the entire time he was in Southeast Asia, he always dressed as a civilian. Allen got the picture: Darr worked with some high-level intelligence group, perhaps the Central Intelligence Agency. Allen was surprised someone in that line of work was so open about it but figured Darr was trying to impress him.
It would be several years before Allen realized that everything Darr said that night was a lie. He had never been in Vietnam. He had never even worked with an intelligence division. There werenât many spies handling maintenance detail in Utah. It would prove to be just the first layer in Darrâs self-created mythology.
In 1977, after a few months as a broker, Darr tried for the big time. He saw that tax shelters were taking off as a business, and Merrill had one of the biggest departments on Wall Street. That, Darr decided, was the place to be.
After lobbying Jack Loughlin, the head of the department, Darr was hired as a product manager. In that job, he marketed specific types of partnerships.
Product managers never sold investments directly to the public. Instead, they traveled throughout the Merrill retail system, talking up the shelters in the hopes of persuading the brokers to sell them. For Darr, the job was remarkably like his fatherâs. Both traveled around the country representing particular products to retail salesmen. But instead of trying to persuade salesmen to offer Naturalizer shoes, Darr was trying to convince them to sell tax shelters.
Darr proved to be a master at sales. He was not the type to spend much time exploring the deep mechanics of how a particular tax shelter worked, but he always knew enough to persuade brokers to sell a deal. He also was one of the few marketers willing to stand up to arrogant investment bankers. If bankers made a shelter too complicated, he would tell them that they would confuse the brokers.
Darrâs style was effective; he worked hard, but never bored his colleagues by poring over the dry details of some business deal. Instead, Darr cracked them up with the latest bawdy joke or his dead-on impersonation of Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg. It was a glorious time for Darr. For the first time, big success seemed within his reach.
A few months after joining Merrillâs tax
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