Move over, John Thain. The media-sanctioned rogue's gallery of overpaid Wall Streeters got three new entrants in early March, when The Wall Street Journal identified Merrill Lynch & Co.'s "$10 million men" -- 11 executives who were paid more than $10 million even as the firm posted a $27 billion loss. Singled out for front-page ridicule were trader David Sobotka ($13 million); Thain hire and three-month-employee Peter Kraus ($29.4 million); and investment banker Andrea Orcel ($33.8 million).

Investment banker who?

London-based Orcel is well-known in European banking circles but less of a household name on this side of the Atlantic. His claim to fame -- or infamy -- is that he advised Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc and friends on their $100 billion acquisition of ABN Amro Bank NV in 2007, a triumph when announced but now viewed as an unmitigated disaster. But Orcel had a storied career as a financial institutions dealmaker long before he put together the ill-fated RBS bidding consortium. Longtime clients include Milan's UniCredit SpA and Spain's Banco Santander SA, a bank he brought into the ABN deal.

Raised in Rome and fluent in Italian, French, Spanish and English, Orcel worked on UniCredit's €19.2 billion ($24.3 billion) deal for Germany's HVB Group in 2005 and its €21.8 billion acquisition of Capitalia SpA two years later. Orcel advised Banca Intesa SpA on its €29.6 billion deal for Sanpaolo IMI SpA, Italy's biggest-ever domestic banking deal. He helped Santander buy the U.K.'s Abbey National plc for £8.8 billion in 2004 and Spain's Banco Bilbao Vizcaya combine with Argentaria in 1999.

Educated at the University of Rome and Insead, Orcel joined Merrill in 1992 after stretches at Goldman, Sachs & Co. and the Boston Consulting Group Inc. He became head of the global financial institutions group in 2001 and in 2004 took the additional title of head of investment banking for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In 2007, he was named head of global origination and is now in charge of international and corporate investment banking for Bank of America Corp.