The world’s leading equity underwriter Merrill Lynch & Co. topped its main rival Morgan Stanley in global stock sales in the first quarter, according to Bloomberg.

Earlier Merrill Lynch reported a slight decline in the Wall Street profit growth on the US interest rate hikes. Higher costs from acquisitions probably led to a 6% fall in net income to $1.17 billion, a survey of 16 analysts by Thomson Financial shows.

The world’s largest securities firm CEO E. Stanley O’Neal has cut about 17,000 jobs since he became Merrill’s president in 2001. Last year, he reported net income of $4.4 billion.

``Merrill has got better focus than Morgan Stanley right now. O’Neal is 100 times better than Purcell,’’ Bloomberg cited Michael Chren, manager of the $625 million Armada Large Cap Value Fund in Cleveland, as saying.

Data compiled by Bloomberg shows that Morgan Stanley’s equity sales totaled more than $100 billion in the first quarter of 2005. Merrill earned as much as $450 million from managing $11.3 billion of share sales in the same period.