Painewebber Group Inc

Providing more evidence of Wall Street's blockbuster first quarter, Merrill Lynch & Co., the nation's biggest brokerage, on Tuesday reported its biggest quarterly profit ever. Discount broker Charles Schwab Corp. said its first-quarter earnings nearly tripled from a year ago. PaineWebber Group Inc. said profit more than doubled to a record quarterly level. The surge was widely anticipated.

Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill said Wednesday that he will consult regularly with about two dozen Wall Street executives to help form the administration's economic policy. Before meeting privately with a group that included Citigroup Inc. Chairman Sanford Weill, PaineWebber Group Inc.

Prudential Securities Inc. said Monday it has agreed with PaineWebber Group Inc. to allow their clients to freely transfer proprietary mutual fund holdings between accounts at the two Wall Street firms. The arrangement is a departure from traditional practices at brokerages, which generally place restrictions on the ownership of proprietary funds by nonclients. The agreement is the first of its kind, a PaineWebber spokeswoman said. Prudential, the fifth-largest U.S.

RJR Nabisco Inc. reported a 62% drop in first-quarter net income Thursday, blaming the decline on the costs of its takeover by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Inc. and the failure of its smokeless cigarette. The company reported net income of $103 million, down from $273 million in the same quarter a year ago, and earnings per share of 44 cents, down from $1.09 in the first quarter of 1988. Sales in the quarter were up 5%, to $4 billion from $3.8 billion in 1988. Without the merger-related costs and a charge for the discontinued test of its Premier smokeless cigarette, earnings per share would have been $1.41 and net income would have been up 17% to $320 million in the first quarter, RJR Nabisco said.

Brokerages Merrill Lynch & Co., PaineWebber Group Inc. and Jefferies Group Inc. reported profits well above analyst expectations for the first quarter as rising markets boosted commissions, trading and other income. Merrill, the biggest U.S. brokerage, said its earnings rose 18% to $609 million, or $1.44 a share. powered by a rebound in trading of stocks and especially bonds. Analysts were anticipating $1.23 a share.

Merrill Lynch & Co., in a serious sign that Wall Street is cutting back after months of global economic turmoil, said it will eliminate 3,400 jobs, or 5.2% of its work force, as it reported a 77% drop in profit for the third quarter. Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Inc. and PaineWebber Group Inc. also reported lower earnings. Merrill, the world's biggest brokerage, said it took an after-tax charge of $288 million for the period because of the job cuts.

Wall Street's fattest cats are sharing in the pain of the stock market slump. Chief executives of major financial companies saw their net worth skyrocket during the bull market, but the value of their company stock holdings and options has plunged by hundreds of millions of dollars in the last 2 1/2 months. The Dow Jones industrial average has dropped 18.3% from its peak July 17 by the close of trading Thursday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating PaineWebber Group Inc. as part of a broad review of Wall Street's limited partnerships sales. The SEC is trying to determine whether PaineWebber misrepresented risks and rewards when it sold about $2 billion of partnerships that invested in assets such as real estate and energy projects, people familiar with the review said. Individuals lost money in such investments as property and energy prices declined.

BankAmerica Corp. is about to announce a deal to acquire investment bank Robertson Stephens for $540 million, sources close to the situation said Sunday. The proposed deal between the two San Francisco-based companies is the latest in a growing trend among bank holding companies, which are buying brokers because of the easing of a restriction on the amount of securities underwriting a bank holding company can do.

A group led by the investment bank PaineWebber Group Inc. said Saturday it agreed to acquire Braniff Inc. in a leveraged buyout that valued the money-losing airline at $111 million. The investor group, BIA Acquisitions, also appointed five top executives who resigned from Piedmont Airlines on Friday to manage Braniff. "We intend for Braniff to become a strong competitive force in our nation's air travel and hospitality industries," Jeffrey R. Chodorow, a BIA official, said in a statement.