Wednesday, November 25,  9:19 am

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After fighting with Bank of America Corp. to shorten the duration of his noncompete clause, former Merrill Lynch & Co. executive Robert McCann is now chief executive of UBS Wealth Management Americas and a member of the group executive board of UBS.

He leads the troubled unit's nearly 8,000 financial advisers in more than 320 branches across the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada. McCann replaces a departing Marten Hoekstra.

Earlier this month, McCann (pictured) resolved the lawsuit with BofA he filed on Aug. 24. BofA had said he could not join a rival firm for a year.

McCann announced his intention to leave shortly after Bank of America completed its acquisition of Merrill in January. His was among the first of many departures at the combined bank. He had a 26-year career with Merrill, where he led its "Thundering Herd" of 16,000 brokers.

He was vice chairman of Merrill and president of global wealth management. McCann has also been a governor of Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and a board member of the Securities Industry Association.

UBS got a massive bailout from the Swiss government to keep from going under and was also the target of an Internal Revenue Service investigation earlier this year. It was accused of helping wealthy Americans avoid taxes. UBS paid $780 million to settle and said it will make information available on 4,450 accounts within a year. Clients have pulled out well over $100 billion over the past year and a half.

UBS chief executive Oswald Grübel said in a statement, "In the Americas alone, the wealth management market opportunity represents high net worth assets of more than $20 trillion." Bloomberg News reported that McCann said he isn't planning to sell the business and doesn't foresee acquisitions at this time. He will present a strategy for the unit by the end of the next quarter.

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Check The Deal Pipeline for updates on these Movers & shakers:

-- Barclays Capital appointed Joseph Gatto as chairman of investment banking for the Americas.

-- Thomas King of London was hired as co-head of corporate finance at BarCap.

-- Tanja Aalto joined BarCap as a managing director in the global restructuring and finance group from Houlihan, Lokey, Howard & Zukin Inc.

Look for these and more on today's Who's in, who's out!

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