As Bank of America Restructures It Continues to Hire Senior Talent to Support Growth in Prime Brokerage Business

Could Bank of America be restructuring itself in the image of the Merrill Lynch? Before being acquired by BoA, Merrill was at one time divided in two parallel universes, Consumer Markets and Capital Markets? And now BoA has created its own Consumer Division headed by David Darnell and a Capital Markets Institutional Investment Banking Division under Tom Montag.

Moreover, today's announcement that Michael Terry will join the company as global head of capital introductions could be seen as supporting that thesis.

Terry will be based in New York and be responsible for leading the expansion of the company's capital introduction efforts. He'll report to Jon Yalmokas, head of U.S. prime brokerage sales, who praised Terry's capital raising experience, knowledge and contacts that will help BofA expand expand further into the hedge fund business.

Prior to joining BoA/Merrill Lynch, Terry was a founding member of Oakpoint Advisors and head of North American capital introductions at Morgan Stanley.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch's prime brokerage platform is ranked No. 1 in capital introductions and No. 1 in Europe in Global Custodian's 2011 Prime Brokerage Survey. In addition, the company was named Best Synthetic Provider in Global Investor's 2010 Synthetic Financing Survey and Most Innovative in Prime Brokerage for 2010 by The Banker magazine.

As for the continued restructuring, up to 600 branches could close in the bank's split into two separate consumer and commercial units, according to CNN, not to mention that BoA would be cutting 30,000 jobs.

The Twittersphere was alive with tweets about possible defections of Merrill Lynch financial advisors now that Sallie Krawcheck is no longer there to protect their compensation.

However, Darnell who will oversee the bank's wealth-management unit, held a series of conference calls with wealth management execs, according to the Wall Street Journal, in which he said he plans to maintain the current compensation structure for financial advisers and keep senior management of the business in place.