By Breakingviews
Some things are so inevitable it makes sense to get them over with. A month ago, that logic drove Charles Schwab (SCHW) and TD Ameritrade (AMTD) to drop commissions on bread-and-butter trades, temporarily wiping $12 billion off their market value. A merger of the two, floated by CNBC on Thursday, would add that much and possibly more. The catch is that it's too appealing for its own good.
Mergers between brokerages tend to yield huge cost savings. That's why this particular $80 billion combination has been tossed around for years. Activist investor Jana