E. Stanley O’Neal will “retire.”

Embattled Merrill Lynch Chief Executive Stanley O’Neal has finally stepped aside, making way for a board member, Alberto Cribiore, to lead a search for a new chief.

The company characterized the departure Tuesday as a retirement, though retirements rarely go into effect immediately and without concrete succession plans. In a statement, Merrill elaborated: “Mr. O’Neal and the board of directors both agreed that a change in leadership would best enable Merrill Lynch to move forward.”

The announcement capped days of speculation about O’Neal’s future as chief executive of Merrill (nyse: MER - news - people ), which is reeling from its outsized exposure to credit derivatives and subprime debt. Last week, Merrill stunned Wall Street by reporting $8.5 billion in write-downs, far greater than it had forecast just weeks before, and its biggest ever quarterly loss.

But it still leaves open the question of who will step in to bail out the ship. Ahmass Fakahany and Gregory Fleming will remain as co-presidents and chief operating officers while the board, led by director Alberto Cribiore, considers candidates from inside and outside the company.

Here is the Merrill Lynch press release. The International Herald Tribute reflects upon O’Neal’s legacy:

Stan O’Neal’s legacy will be cemented as the $8 billion (€5.5 billion) man. That’s about the size of the massive writedown that Merrill Lynch & Co. had to take during its just-ended quarter, which has ruined the reputation of the investment bank’s CEO.

Only months ago, he was being lauded for leading the nation’s largest brokerage firm to its most profitable year ever, thanks to broad cost-cutting and expansions in Merrill’s investment banking and trading operations.

Now, Merrill has added some unwelcome firsts to its list, by reporting the biggest quarterly loss in the company’s 93-year history and by taking the largest quarterly writedown ever by a financial institution, due to the plunging value of its mortgage-related assets.

All this has stripped O’Neal, who grew up in rural Alabama and rose to become the highest-ranking black executive on Wall Street, of his star power. His good standing in corporate America is gone, as is his job. He is surely getting a quick lesson in how today’s financial world works — the focus is on “what have you done for me lately,” not what you’ve done before.

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E. Stanley O’Neal

Demonstrating the truthiness of his Presidential candidacy, Stephen Colbert delivered a campaign speech at USC, Columbia, South Carolina on Sunday, October 28.

Hundreds gathered at USC’s historic Horseshoe Sunday to celebrate “Stephen Colbert Day.”

South Carolina’s favorite son returned to his home state.

“Now therefore I, Robert E. Coble, do declare October 28 Stephen Colbert Day to honor South Carolina’s favorite son!” Mayor Bob Coble told the crowd.

It’s official: not only is Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert running for president, he now has his own day.

Porter Wagoner hosted the The Porter Wagoner Show for 21 years, and performed for 50 years at the Grand Ole Opry. As USA Today notes:

When he thought he had the right audience, Porter Wagoner liked to reach into the inner breast pocket of his electric-blue sport coat and remove a slender electronic device.

“iPod!” he exclaimed. “One thousand songs! My entire career is on here.”

Like everything else Wagoner did in public, it was a beautiful piece of showmanship. It surprised people who were inclined to think of him as a spangle-wearing singer of old-fashioned country songs such as Company’s Comin’, reminding them that he was a bit of a technology geek — a country-music television pioneer and forward-thinking producer. It also let them know that he was still keeping up.

From The LA Times:

Porter Wagoner, the blond pompadoured, rhinestone-encrusted personification of Nashville tradition, host of the longest-running country-music variety show in TV history and mentor to Dolly Parton, died Sunday night of lung cancer. He was 80.

Wagoner died at a hospice in Nashville, according to an announcement on the Grand Ole Opry’s website.

Parton recently went to a Nashville hospital to visit the man who inspired her best-known song, “I Will Always Love You,” after their acrimonious career split in the mid-1970s.

She described him then as very weak, but said Wagoner “had his wits and joked around,” and she vowed she would sing with him again at the Grand Ole Opry when he was ready. Wagoner was released from the hospital Friday and transferred to hospice care.

A little more than a year ago, Wagoner had been seriously ill after suffering an intestinal aneurysm, but defied a dire medical prognosis and recovered sufficiently to mount a career comeback that led to appearances last summer on “The Late Show With David Letterman” and an opening slot at Madison Square Garden with upstart rock band the White Stripes, whose members are ardent Wagoner fans.

Country singer and songwriter Marty Stuart, a generation younger than Wagoner, coaxed his childhood idol into a recording studio last winter to record a new album, “The Wagonmaster.” The recording brought Wagoner renewed attention, some of the best reviews of his career and created a new cachet among fans who are yet another generation younger than Stuart. The album also is expected to garner Wagoner at least one Grammy Award nomination from members of an industry that has long favored rewarding veterans who successfully reignite their careers.

[…]

Porter Wagoner was born Aug. 12, 1927, in West Plains, Mo. He grew up helping out on the family farm, but when he wasn’t busy with farm chores he would spend hours standing on the trunk of a felled oak tree pretending he was host of the Grand Ole Opry, which he listened to religiously on the radio.

Once a neighboring farmer stumbled on the young man mimicking his act and asked what he was doing. When Wagoner told him of his dream to be an Opry star one day, the farmer told him, “You’re as close to the Grand Ole Opry as you’ll ever get. You’ll be looking these mules in the rear end when you’re 65.”

Recalling that incident backstage at the Opry earlier this year, Wagoner, who was surrounded in his kingly dressing room by photos showing him with hundreds of celebrity well-wishers who had joined him on the show over the years, just smiled and said with a gentle laugh, “I wish I could see him now.”

Porter Wagoner and The Willis Brothers, performing “I’ll Fly Away.”