page_title: Donald Regan
section_title: Wall Street
hierarchical_section_title: Donald Regan / Wall Street
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a reproduction of the portrait of Donald Regan as CEO of Merrill Lynch, painted in 1981 by the artist Robert Templeton,
context_page_description: Donald Thomas "Don" Regan was the 66th United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1981 to 1985 and the White House Chief of Staff from 1985 to 1987 under Ronald Reagan. In the Reagan administration, he advocated "Reaganomics" and tax cuts as a means to create jobs and to stimulate production.
  Earlier in his life, he had studied at Harvard University before he served in the United States Marine Corps, achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 1946 he started to work for Merrill Lynch. He served as its chairman and CEO from 1971 to 1980.
context_section_description: After the war, he joined Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. in 1946 as an account executive trainee. He worked up through the ranks, eventually taking over as Merrill Lynch's chairman and CEO in 1971, the year the company went public. He held those positions until 1980.
  Regan was one of the original directors of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation and was vice chairman of the New York Stock Exchange from 1973 to 1975. He was a major proponent of brokerage firms going public, which he viewed as an important step in the modernization of Wall Street. Under his supervision, Merrill Lynch had its initial public offering on June 23, 1971, becoming only the second Wall Street firm to go public. (Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette was the first.)
  During his tenure in these two positions, Regan pushed hard for an end to minimum fixed commissions for brokers, which were fees that brokerage companies had to charge clients for every transaction they made on the clients' behalf. Regan saw them as a cartel-like restriction. His lobbying played a large part of fixed commissions being abolished in 1975.
caption: Donald Regan portrait as Merrill Lynch CEO, by Robert Templeton, 1981
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