Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC) CEO Ken Lewis wanted Merrill Lynch & Co.'s "thundering herd," but he's losing the driving force behind that herd over a culture clash (as well as shrinking bonuses due to watchful government and public eyes [see: TARP money]). And the amount of big-name bankers heading for the exits prompted us to put an exodus Dealwatch together. Since the $50 billion deal, we've tracked more than 50 people heading for greener pastures.
To be fair, BofA-Merrill has been
hiring to replace some of these bankers, including Steven Niemczyk, who will join its global corporate and investment banking business as global head of asset management investment banking in June. Dow Jones even picked up on a nifty
integration tactic. The
client referral program, in which bankers pass on account leads to the 16,000 Merrill Lynch financial advisers, is designed to help the advisers' annual production.
Now, on to the defections.The latest: A
trio of healthcare dealmakers headed to boutique investment bank Centerview Partners LLC, including Alan Hartman, Richard Girling and Mark Robinson. The firm is also opening offices in London and San Francisco.
(It's worth noting that boutique i-banks don't have any government-sponsored spending caps.)On the same day we reported those moves, our April 16 Movers & shakers column also featured:
- BofA-Merrill's EMEA head of mining and metals, Khaled Fathallah, who joined Deutsche Bank AG; and
- longtime Merrill banker Takeshi Hasebe, who joined Credit Suisse Group as head of ECM in Japan.
Since our
April 3 post which included reports saying renowned rainmaker George H. "Woody" Young III was leaving, these movers joined the exodus:
- America's Growth Capital hired Hubert Chang as a managing director covering semiconductors; cleantech;
- Shearman & Sterling LLP grabbed D. Kevin Dolan as of counsel, working from Washington and New York; and
- Deutsche Bank took Wayne Yang as head of key clients group, Southeast Asia.
Between April 3 and March 12, we tracked these people:
- SMH Capital Markets brought in Sylvia Barnes as a managing
director and group head of its energy investment banking practice,
based in Houston. Barnes was a managing director at Merrill's energy
investing banking practice;
- Moelis & Co. hired
Stan Holtz as a managing director in Chicago to lead its telecom sector
coverage. At BofA, Holtz was head of U.S. telecom investment banking;
- Carmel Partners Inc. tapped
Quinn Barton as a managing partner in charge of both performing and
distressed debt acquisition. He head its new office in New York. Barton
spent nearly five years at BofA, where he was a managing director and
head of CMBS trading;
- Chief investment strategist Richard Bernstein and chief North America economist David Rosenberg are leaving
Banc of America Securities-Merrill Lynch Research. Twenty-year Merrill
veteran Bernstein will leave on April 15 to pursue other opportunities,
while nine-year ML veteran Rosenberg will leave on May 11. BofA is
searching for replacements. Returning to Toronto, Rosenberg is joining
wealth management firm Gluskin Sheff + Associates Inc. as chief
economist and strategist;
- BofA's head of equity sales for the Americas, Brennan Warble, said he's retiring;
- Nomura Holdings Inc. hired
Andrea Pellegrini as co-chairman for Italy and head of investment
banking. At BofA-Merrill, he was he was chairman of the public sector
group for Europe, the Middle East and Africa and head of investment
banking for Italy;
- Thomas Davidson said he's leaving for
Credit Suisse Group. In June, Davidson will co-head the healthcare
group in the Americas alongside Stuart Smith;
- BMO Capital
Markets brought in Christopher Donohoe as a managing director in its
financial institutions group. Donohoe had been a senior investment
banker with BofA;
- Credit Suisse also hired
Jonathan Grundy to head its energy business in Europe, the Middle East
and Africa. He will join the London office in July. Grundy was global
head of energy and power investment banking at BofA-Merrill;
- Cowen
Group Inc. hired Grant Miller for its capital markets group as a
managing director. He was an ECM managing director at BofA Securities;
and
- Mary Joan Hoene, an investment management and securities lawyer, joined
Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP in New York as counsel in its
corporate practice. As independent fund chief compliance officer at
BofA, she was responsible for establishing a compliance program for
four fund families aggregating more than $200 billion in assets,
following the bank's merger with FleetBoston Financial Corp.
Before our April 3
post, we put together a heftier list on
March 12 going back to January, when the merger was completed:
- KBW Inc. expanded
its mortgage-backed securities trading team with senior agency
pass-through trader Greg Hargraves, who spent nearly 20 years in the
mortgage business at Merrill;
- Oppenheimer & Co. hired Brian Belski as a managing director and chief investment strategist. Belski was chief U.S. sector strategist at Merrill;
- Evercore Partners Inc. recruited
George Ackert as a senior managing director to establish and lead a
transportation and infrastructure practice. He's also developing a
sports advisory business for Evercore.
At BofA-Merrill Ackert was global head of transportation and
infrastructure;
- CIBC World Markets Inc. tapped
Eric Price as a managing director and head of the New York financial
solutions group. Price was head of U.S. institutional FX sales at
Merrill;
- Amherst Securities Group LP brought in Andrew Beal for agency CMO trading. Beal worked at Merrill for 12 years, where he traded collateralized mortgage obligations;
- Qatalyst Group enlisted
Jean Tardy-Joubert as a partner and head of European investment banking
and opened the firm's London office. Tardy-Joubert was head of European
technology i-banking at Merrill;
- Not a poaching, but obviously significant, Merrill's former CEO and president John Thain was replaced by BofA general counsel Brian Moynihan in late January;
- Robert Chiu joined
Nomura Holdings Inc. as head of TMT investment banking. Previously, he
was regional head of TMT i-banking, Asia-Pacific, and chairman of
Taiwan i-banking for Merrill;
- Longtime Merrill Lynch bankers Daniel Markaity and Christopher Bury have joined Jefferies & Co. as managing directors and co-heads of the fixed-income rates business;
- Vicky Binns, head of equities research at Merrill's Australia operations, went to BHP Billiton Ltd.'s Singapore office. She will lead the mining giant's global team of commodity analysts;
- Another noted move that wasn't a poach: Gregory Fleming (who brokered the BofA-Merrill deal on Merrill's behalf), former president and chief operating officer of Merrill, was appointed
as a senior research scholar and distinguished visiting fellow of the
Center for the Study of Corporate Law, both at Yale Law School;
- At the time Fleming left, Merrill's Singapore-based chief Asia strategist, Mark Matthews, reportedly left the firm;
- Thomas Weisel Partners Group Inc. took on
Steven Satov as a managing director in institutional sales. He was a
director of institutional equity sales at Merrill Lynch Canada;
- Greg Margolies joined
Ares Management LLC as a senior partner and head of its capital markets
group. At Merrill, he was head of global leveraged finance and capital
commitments and a member of the executive committee of the i-banking
group.
To start things off, just a few days after BofA
completed its hasty (that's not in retrospect, the deal was kind of
slapped together) acquisition of Merrill Lynch to grab its "thundering
herd" of brokers, Robert McCann, who was vice chairman and president of
the prized global wealth management division at Merrill,
headed for the door. -
Baz Hiralal
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