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 Merrill Lynch & Co., coaxed into a overnight acquisition by Bank of America Corp. for $50 billion in stock, has been both losing and hiring top bankers. While Alberto Cribiore may have been the biggest name to depart, The Deal has learned about 41 bankers who used the door at Merrill just in the past month. As you'll see from the company's poaching, it's anyone's game.
The Brain
This week, Merrill grabbed expert financial adviser Jay Thornton from Morgan Stanley for its global wealth management group. Reports say Merrill also hired Edward Dulin from UBS, and Robert Dyer and Thomas Dexter from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. InvestmentNews.com reported Thornton produced more than $5.3 million in commissions and fees and managed $1.3 billion during his stint at Morgan while Dyer and Dexter produced over $2.9 million with $921 million in combined assets at Lehman. Last week Merrill took six bankers from Lehman in Hong Kong including, James Chapman, who became a director and head of Asia power investment banking. The other hires included vice presidents Anoop Chaudhry and Ken Ng, associates Raymond Yu and Robert Smith, and analyst Brian Kelly. Also, Merrill brought in nine advisers from Wachovia Securities LLC: Michael Avadikianm, Stefan Contorno, Elizabeth Goldthwaite, Joyce Harris, Phil Kousaie, Donald Limacher, Rhett Merchant, Mark Robles and John Straughn. A big move came in mid-September when Merrill hired Wall Street veteran George "Woody" Young III as global head of technology, media and telecommunications investment banking, based in New York. Young arrived after his noncompetition clause with Lehman Brothers expired. Young left Lehman in March 2007. A week before adding Young, Merrill hired Michael Nierenberg from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. to head the global mortgages and securitized products businesses, and James De Mare from Citigroup Inc. was added to run the company's mortgage trading operations. Also in September, Merrill hired merger expert Dick Barrett and Mark Ellman as vice chairmen, based in New York and reporting to Andrea Orcel, head of global origination. They focus on capital raising and merger advisory activities. Both arrived from Barrett Ellman Stoddard Capital Partners. The Drain Of course, banks and advisory firms -- either more stable or nimble -- also see Merrill's position as an opportunity to heighten their ranks. In January, following completion of a notice period, Paul Stefanick will become a managing director and global head of the industrials group in Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.'s global banking division. Stefanick was a managing director and chairman of global M&A at Merrill. He joined Merrill's M&A group in 1988. London alternative asset management firm Duet Group launched distressed funds in Europe and Japan and took nine bankers from Merrill. Hedi Ben Mlouka was appointed CEO of Duet MENA. At Merrill, he was head of equity and structured products marketing for Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Amit Shah of Merrill is now a director of Duet MENA. Shinji Yoshikawa becomes CEO of Duet Asia and will also be chief investment officer of Duet Japan Special Situations Fund, focusing on distressed real estate opportunities in Japan. He spent nine years at Merrill. Kosuke Kondo joins Duet Asia as a senior investment analyst. Dale Lattanzio was named CIO of Duet European Debt Fund. Lattanzio was co-head of Americas FICC and co-head of global commercial real estate at Merrill. Salim Mohamed of Merrill will be CIO of Duet Equity Income Fund. Clive Smalley becomes CFO of Duet Group after 10 years at Merrill. Tue Sando is now general counsel of Duet Group. The firm also hired Bojidar Savkov as a vice president of marketing and Osman Semerci took over as CEO of Duet Group in April after spending 16 years at Merrill in Europe and Asia, where he had been a member of the global operating committee and global head of FICC. JER Partners, the private equity commercial real estate investment division of the J.E. Robert Cos., tapped Chester Barnes as a managing director, head of European asset management. Previously, Barnes was the head of asset management (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) for Merrill. Citadel Investment Group LLC, which got into trouble with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. for poaching, made two senior hires from Merrill to lead its capital development efforts in Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa. Tobias Gehrke and Anita Nassar joined Citadel as co-heads of international distribution and marketing. At Merrill, they were co-heads of government institutional sales. Andrew Knott, who ran the European oil and gas exploration and production equity research team at Merrill, packed his bags for the London office of Alternative asset manager GLG Partners Inc., where he's busy creating a new global energy product and managing its global energy investments. After spending two years as head of European restructuring for Merrill, Benjamin Babcock defected to Morgan Stanley's London office, where he's head of restructuring for EMEA. Big name banker Alberto Cribiore joined Citigroup Inc.'s institutional clients group as a vice chairman. Cribiore served as interim nonexecutive chairman and chairman of the search committee prior to the appointment of John Thain, who got a new title under BofA as president of global banking, securities and wealth management in the combined company. We skipped over some of the smaller bankers we've covered in recent weeks, but you get the idea. As always, if you want to keep posted on who's in and out, stay tuned to our Movers & shakers column. The poaching and defections between now and the closing of the Bank of America deal is bound to be as rocky as the stock market. - Baz Hiralal The Deal NewsWeekly's Dealmakers section Categories Deal Video
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