Bailing out...THE VULTURES OF WALL STREET

LOOKING BACK A DECADE AGO AT SOME OF THE WALL STREET BILLIONAIRES CURRENTLY BEING BAILED OUT BY...
US TAXPAYERS ! ! !

The name of the game in the financial-services business these days can be summed up in three words: assets under management. He who ends up with the most, wins.

Witness the $48 billion merger of Travelers Group with Citicorp. This combination will create a huge new financial-services company--one with an insurance arm (Travelers), a banking unit (Citibank), and an investment house (Salomon Smith Barney).

The new firm, to be called Citigroup, will have over 100 million customers worldwide and control roughly $1.36 trillion in client investment assets (not counting bank deposits). That barely edges out Merrill Lynch, which has $1.35 trillion in client assets under management. UBS, the product of this year's merger between Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank, controls $1.09 trillion in client assets.

More recently, rumors have been flying that insurance giant AIG will try to snap up Goldman Sachs after Wall Street's most prestigious investment bank goes public as early as this fall. There's also talk that securities firm Lehman Brothers or brokerage house PaineWebber could fall prey to a large European bank like Deutsche Bank.

Given the grab for client assets under way in the industry, Worth was surprised to learn there's no single source of reliable information that ranks the top firms. So we researched our own list of the top ten. Included in each firm's total are institutional assets, brokerage accounts, mutual funds, variable annuities, and private-banking accounts--everything but retail bank deposits. We also looked only at U.S. companies.

Client assets, of course, aren't the only measure of a financial company's clout. Revenue, equity capital, and the institution's own asset base all provide different pictures of a firm's size and strength. The new Citigroup, for instance, will have $44 billion in capital. But it won't stay on top for long.

When NationsBank completes its previously announced merger with BankAmerica (expected in early October), it will have $48.9 billion.

The Top Ten in Client Assets (in Billions)
1.	Merrill Lynch The current leader in the grab for client assets under management isn't resting on its laurels. It wants to hit the $2 trillion mark by 2002.	$1,352
2.	Travelers The Merger with Citicorp, expected in early October, will bump it to the top of this list--barely. The new firm, to be called Citigroup, will have $1.36 trillion in client assets.	1,140
3.	UBS Formed by the merger of Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank, this firm is on our list because its institutional business is managed by UBS Brinson in Chicago.	1,093
4.	Fidelity Investments The total here includes the $616 billion managed by Fidelity's horde of mutual funds. Most of the rest is housed at Fidelity's discount-brokerage operation.	941
5.	Barclays global investors This San Francisco firm, a unit of Barclays Bank, has only about 1,400 clients. But they are very large clients--institutions with an average of $400 million each.	564
6.	Mellon Bank This outfit's Dreyfus subsidiary accounts for $110 billion of its client assets under management. Mellon itself focuses on institutions and high-net- worth individuals.	460
7.	State Street The vast majority of its total comes from its 8,000 institutional accounts as opposed to its 16,000 retail customers, including the owners of its SSgA mutual funds.	459
8.	Charles Schwab This discount broker, based in San Francisco, makes the list on sheer volume, with 5.4 million customers. A full half of its stock trading now occurs on the Internet.	400
9.	Vanguard Group Index funds are at the fore of Vanguard's product offerings. So while it has lots of money in its coffers, the market itself dictates Vanguard's investments.	375
10.	Morgan Stanely Dean Witter Though last on this list, Morgan Stanley fairs better by other traditional measures of financial clout. For instance, it is third in total revenue and second in total assets.	374*
Data as of 6/ 30/98. Data as of 5/31/98. Sources: Company reports and Market Guide.*