Within days of announcing the biggest quarterly loss in the history of the company, Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. fired its chairman and CEO, Stan O’Neal, Reuters reported.

Merrill Lynch, the world’s largest brokerage, said Alberto Cribiore, a board member, will serve as interim non-executive chairman. Cribiore, who founded a private equity firm, Brera Capital, will chair a committee to find a permanent successor to O’Neal. The search committee will look both inside and outside the company.

O’Neal’s began his term in 2002 as the first African-American to run a major Wall Street company. His reign ended after he miscalculated the company’s exposure to risky subprime loans, which set off an $8.4 billion write-down in the third quarter. Merrill Lynch reported a net loss of $2.3 billion for the quarter, much worse than O’Neal had estimated.

O’Neal and the board had agreed that a change in leadership would best enable Merrill Lynch to move forward, the company said in a statement today.