With Bank of America Corp. acquiring Merrill Lynch & Co. for $50 billion in stock, three unnamed Merrill directors will join BofA's board. No role was announced for Merrill chairman and CEO John Thain (pictured). By adding Merrill Lynch's more than 16,000 financial advisers, BofA would have the largest brokerage in the world with more than 20,000 advisers, making it the ninth largest adviser on global mergers and acquisitions.

Merrill has been beefing up its ranks of late, most recently hiring 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 Inc. expired. Young left Lehman in March 2007, where he was head of the global communications group. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, although none of the broker-dealer subsidiaries (which could be sold) or other subsidiaries of LBHI were included in the filing.

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.

The Merrill-BofA deal comes one week after the credit crunch claimed Washington Mutual Inc. CEO Kerry Killinger, who stepped down from the role and was replaced by Alan Fishman, former chairman of commercial mortgage brokerage firm Meridian Capital Group.

Credit Suisse Group is hiring 14-year Lehman Brothers Inc. veteran Philippe Cerf as a managing director in the EMEA mergers and acquisitions group on the investment banking team. The bank is also taking on 18-year Deutsche Bank AG veteran Anthony Laubi as a managing director and head of EMEA paper and packaging in the investment banking group.

Cerf will head to Credit Suisse's London office in early December, reporting to David Livingstone. His most recent role at Lehman was head of technology, aerospace and defense investment banking coverage. Laubi will also arrive in December, based in London and reporting to Jim Amine. Laubi focused on industrials M&A at DB.

CS is also boosting its industrials capabilities in China. Arthur Zhu joined as a managing director of China investment banking, initially based in Beijing. Zhu was a managing director at Deutsche Bank in China, where he covered Chinese state-owned enterprises, focusing on the transport and industrial sector.

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP and Hölters & Elsing are combining. The 55 lawyers in three offices will operate in Germany as Orrick Hölters & Elsing. The combined firm will have 1,100 lawyers, with over 250 throughout Europe.

Arno Frings, formerly managing partner of Hölters & Elsing, will serve as partner-in-charge of Germany and will have a seat on Orrick's European supervisory committee, where co-founder Siegfried Elsing will also sit.

Partner Steven Zalesin is now chair of the litigation department at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP. He joined the firm in 1989.

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP hired litigator Helen Cantwell as counsel. Prior to this, Cantwell served for eight years as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, most recently as a member of the securities and commodities fraud task force.

Kerry McTigue became a partner in the Washington office of Duane Morris LLP. She joins the trial practice after serving as general counsel of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. McTigue has also been chief legal adviser to the FBI and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigative Division for military installation criminal cases.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP tapped Michael Bopp in Washington as a partner on the public policy and white collar defense and investigations groups. Bopp most recently served as associate director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Bopp is joined by Nikesh Jindal, former associate general counsel of OMB, who joins Gibson Dunn as an associate.

In New York, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP brought in Jessica Fink and Joseph Glynn as special counsel in the financial restructuring department. Prior to this, Fink was an associate at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP; Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP; and Pillsbury Winthrop LLP.

Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLP hired V. Robert Denham Jr. as a partner in the business litigation group. He was a partner with Powell Goldstein LLP, where he formerly was a practice group leader and a former member of the governing board of partners.

In Hong Kong, Louis Rabinowitz joined Latham & Watkins LLP's corporate department as counsel. He covers corporate and finance transactions and arrived from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP.

In Abu Dhabi, Mark Godfrey has joined the firm as counsel in the finance department. He practiced at Allen & Overy LLP.

In Washington, Latham & Watkins said Alice Fisher will rejoin the firm as a partner in the litigation department and as a global co-chair of the white collar and government investigations practice. Fisher returns to Latham from the U.S. Department of Justice, where she served as assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division.