 In the same year, the firm also underwrote the IPO of Microsoft, advised General Electric on its acquisition of RCA, joined the London and Tokyo stock exchanges, and became the first United States bank to rank in the top 10 of mergers and acquisitions in the United Kingdom.During the 1980s the firm became the first bank to distribute its investment research electronically and created the first public offering of original issue deep-discount bond.Robert Rubin and Stephen Friedman assumed the co-senior partnership in 1990 and pledged to focus on globalization of the firm to strengthen the merger & acquisition and trading business lines.