"Is the adviser doing what's best for me, or is the adviser doing what's best for the company?" says Jack Waymire, founder of Paladin Registry, an information services provider that rates financial advisers. "I would view Merrill Lynch more as a distribution system to sell products; in this environment, Bank of America just tells Merrill Lynch to sell its products." "If you've got these household names handling your money, you may feel relatively safe," he says. "Merrill has all these resources, and they're using sales skills to convince you they're experts. The advisers are not even managing the money half the time. It's a big, big mess and it's not going to be cleaned up anytime soon." The bank disagrees. "These comments are woefully dated and do not reflect the reality of how our financial advisers serve their clients," says Bank of America spokeswoman Morris. Nine out of 10 clients would recommend a Merrill adviser to their family and friends, she notes. "The average length of our relationship with clients is 13 years, and our client attrition rates are in the low single digits," adds Morris. "Our training program for advisers is the longest and most rigorous in the industry." Moreover, Merrill Lynch "is hiring in a big way," says David A. Geracioti, editor in chief of Registered Rep magazine and RegisteredRep.com. This has generally meant forcing out financial advisers who produce less than $400,000 per year -prompting some defections of long-time Merrill advisers to the likes of HighTower, a Chicago-based aggregator of financial adviser firms. For customers sticking with Merrill, such as the Reeds, there is good news: "Client assets have held up pretty well, all things considered," Geracioti says. "The only way Bank of America would spin out its best-performing unit is if it had to 'burn the furniture' to raise capital. In fact, Merrill Lynch is the crown jewel of Bank of America, one of the bright spots in an otherwise troubled company." IF YOU ARE A BANK OF AMERICA SHAREHOLDER Bad news has dogged Bank of America since the 2008 financial crisis. The bank has lost half its share value since January and reported an $8.8 billion quarterly loss in July. Much of that loss is related to a settlement over lingering mortgage problems, stemming from the bank's ill-timed purchase of Countrywide Financial. And reports estimate layoffs of 40,000 employees in the coming months (see ). By realigning its management team, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank is another effort to turn fortunes around. David Darnell, who rose to a newly-created co-COO position, will direct retail banking and take over Krawcheck's duties, which include supervising more than 16,000 financial advisers. "If you're a Merrill investor, you're a Bank of America investor now," says Bill DeShurko, author of "The Naked Truth About Your Money" (Penguin) and president/owner of 401 Advisor, LLC in Centerville, Ohio. "And here's the concern: You've got a bank that's in financial trouble. There's no question about that; the stock market is not so stupid to value Bank of America at $7 a share if they didn't have serious problems." Several brokerages are trimming their earnings estimates for the company. Skeptics say Bank of America needs an extreme makeover, which could include spinning off Merrill Lynch, a Chapter 11 restructuring or placing all of the rotting mortgages into a new entity. Even the bulls who believe Bank of Amer