Another senior tech exit at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

One of Bank of America’s highest-ranked female technologists has left the bank as part of an ongoing shake-up at the top in IT.

Bridget O’Connor, chief information officer for global banking and markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch left earlier this month. O’Connor moved to head up BAML’s investment banking technology in April 2015 after five years as CIO of its consumer bank. She worked at the bank for nearly seven years, having joined from the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), where she was CTO, in 2010. She was also a managing director in technology at Barclays investment bank.

She will be replaced by David Reilly, BAML's current chief technology officer.

This is a very senior exit at Bank of America, but a number of CTOs and managing directors lower down the ranks have also left in recent months. As we reported, Bob Hillier, head of fixed income currencies and commodities technology, left in October 2016 to start a home renovation firm in Texas. This followed the exit of Glenn Gribble, a managing director and head of developer architecture, who joined the bank in 2010 from Goldman Sachs, where he was a technology fellow, departed in April. Jason Petrone, another technology managing director responsible for building the Quartz risk platform and Michael Naunton, a managing director in New York and head of its GMT Quartz core also left. Peter Richard, CTO for markets and risk in London, left last year too and is now running his own fintech start-up, Cloudreach.

Bank of America didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Paul Bennie, managing director of technology headhunters Bennie MacLean, said he expects an internal promotion cycle will fill the void, rather than external hires. “Opportunities will be created layer or two below CIO as the new team is formed, however I am not expecting a wholesale transformation of their tech function,” he said.

Correction: A previous version of this article said that Cathy Bessant, chief operations and technology officer, had left the bank. This is not true. 

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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