BAC Bank of America Corporation

Bank of America Corp.'s Merrill Lynch unit is shuffling several of the top executives who oversee the brokerage's more than 14,000 financial advisers, in the wake of broader cost cuts at the bank.

Merrill also told its brokers this week that it would consolidate its so-called Heartland division to reduce the number of market regions to 10 from 11, according to a memorandum viewed by The Wall Street Journal and people familiar with the matter. Merrill's market division heads oversee numerous so-called complexes, or clusters of branch offices, in groups of states throughout the U.S.

The Heartland division comprised states including Wyoming, Colorado, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Those states will be split into neighboring markets, the memo said.

The division's dissolution is part of Merrill head John Thiel's effort to "simplify" the firm's management structure, according to the memo. But it also comes after Bank of America Chief Executive Brian Moynihan said last month that he would further reduce costs if results didn't improve.

Earlier this week, Bank of America began laying off roughly 200 employees in its trading and investment-banking units.

Merrill's Heartland region head, Jodi Rolland, will shift into Bank of America's global commercial bank as its Colorado market executive, the memo said, as the company further shifts executives between the bank and wealth management. She is focused on "growth opportunities" in Colorado, the memo said.

Meanwhile, Jeff Ransdell, Merrill's Southeastern U.S. head, will retire to "pursue new opportunities," the memo said. Mr. Ransdell had been with the firm for 20 years, starting as a broker before eventually managing advisers in Florida, Alabama, South East Georgia, the Caribbean and Latin America.

In July, Merrill said that it would reconfigure its international wealth business to create a specialized team of financial advisers to handle clients in 29 countries, including those in Latin America. The move in part refocused Merrill's efforts on those countries since selling its international wealth-management offices in 2012 to Swiss private-banking specialist Julius Baer Group AG.

But Merrill also raised account minimums for clients in those regions to require those investors to have balances above $1 million. It wasn't clear if that strategy change contributed to Mr. Ransdell's decision to retire as he couldn't be reached for comment.

Replacing Mr. Ransdell is Don Plaus, who had been overseeing Merrill's South Atlantic region. And Eric Schimpf, a regional managing director for Merrill's ultrawealthy client unit, the Private Banking and Investment Group, and head of global corporate and advisory services, will take over Mr. Plaus's vacated role. A replacement for Mr. Schimpf will be named shortly, according to the memo.

People familiar with the matter said Mr. Schimpf is a close ally of Mr. Thiel. Mr. Schimpf rejoined Merrill in 2014 after nearly three years at Macquarie Group. Prior to that, he had worked at Merrill in various capacities between 1994 and 2007.

Write to Michael Wursthorn at michael.wursthorn@wsj.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 01, 2015 16:45 ET (20:45 GMT)

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