Merrill’s Clapacs to Leave After Bank of America Deal

By Jacqueline Simmons

Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Merrill Lynch & Co.’s co-head of European markets, Brent Clapacs, will step down from the bank a month after its takeover by Bank of America Corp.

Clapacs, 45, is retiring to move back to the U.S. with his family, Global Markets head Tom Montag said in a memo to employees yesterday. Mike Stewart, co-head of global equities with Tom Patrick, will move to London and oversee Clapacs’s role for now. A London-based spokeswoman for the bank confirmed the memo, and declined to comment further.

Bank of America is installing managers at the combined firm after completing its $33 billion takeover of Merrill at the start of this month. Merrill agreed in September to be purchased by Bank of America, the third-biggest U.S. bank by market value, after posting about $50 billion of losses and writedowns related to the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market.

“A lot of people are going to cash their chips in at this point,” said Nigel Nicholson, a professor of business leadership at the London Business School. “The old investment banking world is gone in effect and it’s unclear how fond some bankers will be of these giant houses.”

Clapacs, who took over as co-head of the European markets group with David Gu on Jan. 1, has held a series of jobs in his 17-year career at Merrill, including head of European equities for the past three years. He was previously co-head of the global equity-linked business, based in New York, and ran equity trading in the Pacific Rim from Hong Kong.

McCann Leaving

Stewart, a Merrill veteran, took over as head of global equities with Patrick on Jan. 1. They both report to Montag, as do Clapacs and Gu.

Clapacs announced his departure a day after Merrill’s brokerage head Bob McCann said he would leave. McCann, who worked at Merrill for 26 years, will be replaced by Daniel C. Sontag, a 30-year veteran who reported to McCann as head of Merrill’s brokerage operations in the U.S. and Latin America.

Bank of America, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, has announced plans to cut 30,000 to 35,000 jobs in the next three years, because of the merger with Merrill and a weak U.S. economy.

Merrill’s equity markets revenue fell 19 percent in the third quarter, excluding one-time gains and losses, the company said in October.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jacqueline Simmons in Paris at to jackiem@bloomberg.net