 U.S. Trust was acquired in May 2000 for $2.7 billion in stock, making it a wholly owned subsidiary of Charles Schwab & Co. David Pottruck, CEO of Charles Schwab at the time, pursued the acquisition to broaden the firm’s wealth management platform and stop client outflow to bigger wealth management firms like Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.Efforts to integrate the exclusive U.S. Trust into the discount-broker Schwab yielded a culture clash that ultimately undermined the merger.Schwab agreed to sell U.S. Trust to Bank of America for $3.3 billion in cash in November 2006.