Merrill Lynch restructures global markets
Merrill Lynch has restructured its global markets business, creating a new fixed income, currencies and commodities unit under Osman Semerci and appointing Rohit D'Souza to run equities globally.
Three senior bankers have left the bank in the reshuffle. Jeff Kronthal, head of principal investments and secured financing, Harry Lengsfield, head of interest-rate products and foreign exchange, and Doug DeMartin, head of equity and debt sales, have all moved.
Semerci, who was formerly head of Europe, Middle East and Africa global markets and responsible for debt and equity in the region, will run the new FICC business.
D'Souza will be head of global equities as well as head of the global markets business in the Americas. He was previously head of North American equities. Jeff Brand will continue to head global markets in Asia Pacific.
Semerci is expected to announce a global FICC management team over the coming weeks.
Merrill Lynch released its second quarter results last week. While the bank said first half revenues in investment banking and global markets rose 35% year-on-year, the global markets unit suffered a 2% drop in revenues quarter-on-quarter, largely due to weakness in fixed income trading.
Chief financial officer Jeff Edwards attributed that to softness in interest rates and commodities trading.
Semerci joined Merrill Lynch's international private client group in June 1992, moving to London as a fixed income salesperson in global debt markets the following year.
He launched Merrill Lynch's institutional fixed income cash and derivatives client businesses in European emerging markets in 1996, before building a strategic solutions group in Europe, the Middle East and Africa between 1999 and 2001. He ran global markets in Asia from September 2003 to January 2005.
Merrill hired D'Souza from Morgan Stanley in 2004 as head of global equity trading when the bank brought together trading and sales-trading for cash equities, equity-linked products, strategic trading, and all of the bank's global equity financing and services businesses. He was previously head of Morgan Stanley's North American equity trading business.
