Schwab to Sell Stock Offerings

Charles Schwab Corp. said it will sell stock offerings arranged by investment banks Credit Suisse First Boston, J.P. Morgan & Co. and Hambrecht & Quist, further blurring the lines between full-service and discount brokerage firms. “It goes one step further in giving Schwab the arsenal of products to further compete with the full-service firms,” said Goldman, Sachs & Co. analyst Richard Strauss. The move by San Francisco-based Schwab, the largest discount broker in the U.S., with 4.5 million accounts and more than $330 billion in assets, follows Fidelity Investments’ agreement to sell stock underwritten by Salomon Bros. Inc. The Schwab alliance provides J.P. Morgan, Hambrecht & Quist and Credit Suisse with a marketing tool, analysts said. The partnership allows Schwab to give its customers ground-floor access to companies selling stock for the first time. In a robust stock market, shares of these companies can rise as much as 50% or 100% on their first day of trading. Terms of the agreements were not disclosed.