Lehman, Merrill staff eye shifting landscape

By Kristina Cooke and Saeed Azhar

NEW YORK/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Employees of U.S. investment banks Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers struggled to come to terms with the speedy redrawing of Wall Street's financial landscape after Lehman filed for bankruptcy and Merrill was sold to Bank of America.

"Everybody has been shellshocked," a Merrill Lynch & Co Inc trader said on Monday on his way into the company's New York headquarters. "Nobody thought we'd be bought by Bank of America in a million years. At least we won't be bankrupt.

"It should be a interesting day at work."

The New York contingent of Merrill's 60,000 employees marched into the world's largest retail brokerage under a cloud of uncertainty after Bank of America agreed on Sunday to buy Merrill in an all-stock deal worth $50 billion.

"Traders were in an hour earlier than usual this morning and the mood is really grim and quiet in there," said one Merrill employee.

Another said, "I've been e-mailing colleagues in London. The mood over there is not bad. The feeling is it could have been worse, we could have been Lehman ... I'm sad as I believed in this firm and the Merrill Lynch name."

Times were far more dire for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc's more than 25,000 employees, with some wondering when they would get their next paycheck, perhaps their last from the 158-year-old investment bank.

"Everyone is just packing up and exchanging contact details, and just giving assurance that we will be helping each other in the weeks to come," a Lehman employee in London said. "Headhunters are phoning us, which is good. We are just waiting to see how the industry will respond to so many unemployed bankers."