Merrill Lynch has released some interesting data on the number of minority brokers at the firm.Fewer than 300 (about 2 percent) of the firm's 14,700 U.S. retail producers are African-American, 3.5 percent are Hispanic and 3 percent are Asian/Pacific Islanders. The numbers are contained in a Merrill report called "Diversity at Work: A U.S. Progress Report" (available at Merrill's Web site www.ml.com).

byMichael Hayes