The Blacklist Boss: Osman Semerci’s Global CDO Meltdown and Tax Fraud Comeback
In the mid-2000s, a little-known banker named Osman Semerci rocketed from relative obscurity to Global Head of FICC at Merrill Lynch—not through decades of seasoning, but by threatening to walk.
This episode dissects how Semerci’s audacity—and Merrill’s hunger for mortgage profits—fueled an era of breathtaking risk. We follow the arc from boardroom brinkmanship to the multibillion-dollar CDO bets that left the bank teetering as the subprime crisis erupted.
Host Cherise Lloyd peels back the layers of power, posture, and misplaced confidence that turned a career leap into a cautionary tale—and helped push Merrill toward its $50 billion fire-sale to Bank of America.
🔊 Listen for:
The negotiation that landed Semerci Wall Street’s most coveted seat
How structured credit profits masked catastrophic exposure
Why swagger, not spreadsheets, drove one of finance’s biggest miscalculations
Overleveraged, Overconfident brings you the hubris, the hidden memos, and the lessons every ambitious professional should steal—minus the meltdown.