Merrill Lynch Bolsters Business Serving Richest Clients
March 13 2018 - 4:47PM
Dow Jones News
By Lisa Beilfuss
Merrill Lynch is beefing up its ultra-high-net-worth client
group as the Wall Street brokerage works to pull in new assets and
offer a wider range of wealth-management services.
The brokerage arm of Bank of America Corp. said it would
consolidate its private banking, international and institutional
groups to better serve its richest clients. Merrill said it also
would create a new support team within the group, meant to provide
specialized services for those clients, including generational
wealth and family planning.
Don Plaus will remain at the helm of the ultra-high-net worth
client group, known as the Private Banking & Investment Group.
Mr. Plaus was named to the post last March as part of a broader
restructuring after Merrill head Andy Sieg took over.
The changes come as Merrill Lynch and other Wall Street firms
have been working to reinvent the traditional brokerage
business.
Faced with chastened investors, stricter regulations and
increased competition from cheap automated advisers and
brokers-turned-independent advisers, traditional brokerages have
been trying to turn into businesses that go beyond investment
management. The aim is to become more profitable, while grabbing a
bigger share of clients' assets and debt.
Advisory accounts typically generate fees of around 1% of a
client's assets, a lucrative source of revenue that helped Bank of
America's wealth arm notch record revenue of $18.6 billion last
year.
As part of the Merrill revamp announced on Tuesday, Mr. Plaus
named a new director for the Texas region and created a new Miami
region.
Linda Patel, most recently an executive in Merrill's west-coast
division, will become regional managing director for the Texas
region, replacing Bob Johnson. Mr. Johnson is retiring, a
spokeswoman said.
Andres De Corral will lead the new Florida region. He previously
was an executive for Merrill's international group based in Miami,
which is being consolidated in the new structure.
A person familiar with the latest shake-up said the moves
wouldn't affect head count and weren't designed to cut costs.
Rather, Merrill said in a memo that "changes were designed to bring
together the firm's resources and expertise in serving the needs of
wealthy investors, a key and expanding part of the firm's client
base."
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 13, 2018 16:32 ET (20:32 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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