The merger between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch has spurred the departure of at least 18 veteran bankers within the acquired investment bank, according to the Wall Street Journal.
At BofA, where investment banking plays a distant second fiddle to the bank’s commercial banking empire, the departures won’t register as deeply as one might expect, according to company employees quoted by the WSJ. While Merrill was among the world’s top five in terms of M&A volume over the last five years, BofA never ranked higher than twelfth during this period.
Some believe the Merrill departures are a result of an adversarial relationship between the two conjoined banks. Says investment banker Peter Solomon, “You have Merrill people going into a place where there are no advocates, and they need to feel they have one.”
The Merrill departures include Alan Hartman, who earlier this year worked on Pfizer’s acquisition of Wyeth, and Eric Heaton, a former Merrill treasurer, who in February defected to Deutsche Bank.