By Antony Currie and Philip Eade
Michael Packer, head of Merrill Lynch Direct Markets;
Simon Lack, head of investment banking e-commerce development, Chase Manhattan;
Philip Vasan, head of CSFBNext;
Richard Burrell, Head of global e-commerce at ING Barings;
David Woods, e-commerce co-ordinator for investment banking, ABN Amro;
Paul Galant, head of e-commerce, DLJ
Michael Packer, head of Merrill Lynch Direct Markets
Among his peers Michael Packer is unique. He is the only head of e-commerce initiatives at an investment bank who was not only hired from outside the firm to run the unit, but also is not an investment banker through and through. What's more, he actually has experience in the field, in contrast to his peers at many other investment banks who are former business managers drafted into e-commerce with a press release and a formidable stack of reading material.
Before Packer joined Merrill Lynch in May last year, after a few months as a consultant to Kelly Martin, global head of debt markets, he was head of
strategy, technology and operations at publishers Simon and Shuster, and before that was a professor at MIT. His investment-banking experience comes from some years ago, when he ran the technology group which supported the structuring and trading operations of Bankers Trust.