A memorial service is planned for Herb Allison, the former Merrill Lynch president who left retirement to help out Wall Street after it was brutalized by the Financial Crisis, according to friend and former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger.

Allison died on July 14 due to a possible heart attack at his home in Westport, Conn.

In his ProPublica column devoted to his friend, Steiger noted the many highlights of Allison's career.

He first spent 28-years at Merrill Lynch, rising to the rank of president and was an heir apparent to chief executive before a management shakeout in 1999, Steiger writes. Steiger also notes the irony that Allison had been ousted just after playing a significant role in the industry bailout of Long Term Capital Management.

In 2002, Allison was named chairman and chief executive of TIAA-CREF. He was brought in by TIAA's board to change the company's focus from the higher end market to a more of retail focus. That effort had mixed results.

Allison was called to public service twice during the Financial Crisis by two presidents, Steiger writes. In 2008, President George W. Bush asked him to become chief executive of the troubled government-sponsored enterprise Fannie Mae during its government takeover in 2008.

Then, in 2009, President Barack Obama asked him to lead the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

"Herb was both a CEO and a statesman, who served his country at a time of peril," Steiger quotes a statement from Timothy Geithner, the former Obama Administration Treasury Secretary.

The Washington Post recounts that Allison received the call while enjoying his retirement on the beach in the the U.S. Virgin Islands.

According to The Post it was on a Thursday evening that Allison had received a phone call from Ken Wilson, who was an aide to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

The Washington Post then cites Andrew Ross Sorkin’s exhaustive book on the crisis, Too Big to Fail, which quotes Wilson as telling Allison: "You got to plan on packing your clothes and coming up."

In Sorkin's book, Allison then gives the humble, and humorous, response: "Look, Ken. I want to help you guys, and so you have to let me know what to do. I don’t have any clothes. All I have is shorts and flip-flops."

Allison's passing garnered the attention of a large number of financial news outlets, including Bloomberg, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

The Daily Beast had dubbed Allison "The Good Banker." 

Edited by: Tommy Fernandez


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