Is all well in the Zakaria household? Farid Zakaria, the best selling author (Future of Freedom et. al) and an editor at Newsweek International has been on a hitting streak that matches Barry Bonds, or if you prefer Sachin Tendulkar. On the flip side, Arshad Zakaria, one of the two other Zakaria’s has just been eased out of Merrill Lynch in a very public corporate coup. Zakaria was the executive vice president of Merrill Lynch, and president of Global Markets & Investment Banking, and had hit a slump on July 29 when mentor Merrill’s executive vice chairman Thomas Patrick was eased out by Stan O’Neal. The Wall Street Journal called it “a brutal public bout of corporate knife-fighting.”

Zakaria belongs to an illustrious Indian Muslim family from Mumbai. He is an alumnus of Cathedral and John Connon School there. He is also a graduate in applied mathematics from Harvard University, and received his MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar and recipient of the Loeb-Rhoades Fellowship in Finance. Zakaria joined Merrill Lynch in 1987 in investment banking and was named managing director in 1991. [IndiaWest]

We do know that there is another Zakaria brother out there, but apparently he has faded from the scene after his last start-up imploded. He is known to have immaculate taste in wine!