As part of Euromoney's 50th anniversary coverage, we profile some of the biggest names that we interviewed for our April capital markets focus.

As part of Euromoney's 50th anniversary coverage, we profile some of the biggest names that we interviewed for our April capital markets focus.

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Extended results can be viewed here.

Best private banking services overall

Catching lightning in a bottle

Bank of America is due to close its acquisition of Merrill Lynch in March 2009 but it is still not clear what it plans to do with Merrill’s Latin American business.

The credit crisis has crossed the Pacific and hit home in Asia and is now even being felt in the streets of Kuala Lumpur, the capital of oil-rich Malaysia.

Even as they delever, shed assets, raise capital and hoard liquidity against further hits, banks know they must also fundamentally change the rotten underlying business practices that led them to disaster. If they can’t, even those that manage to survive this disaster will fall victim to the next. That’s if the regulators don’t shut them down first. Peter Lee reports on an industry trying to relearn the basics.

The Merrill chief’s honeymoon is over. The question now is whether he’s guilty of misjudgment or mismanagement.

I hate to be the ugly fairy at the wedding but I'm starting to wonder if John Thain will turn out ot be Merrill's messiah after all.

Merrill Lynch

Merrill Lynch has launched an investable index that the bank’s researchers say gives investors cleaner and more efficient access to US equity market volatility than products linked to the present benchmark, the Chicago Board Option Exchange’s Vix (Volatility Index). The Merrill Lynch US Forward Equity Variance Rolling (FEVR) index is designed to measure the performance of a long S&P 500 volatility strategy and follows the launch last year of a similar index in Europe, based on the volatility of the Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50.

Having been hit by a series of defections in recent months, Deutsche Bank has acquired a new head for its Russian business.

Osman Semerci, Merrill Lynch’s former global head of fixed income, currencies and commodities, and co-president of the EMEA global markets and investment banking business, has joined $1.7 billion alternatives group Duet as its chief executive. Duet Group, which started in 2002 with just $10 million in a single fund, now has 14 funds, and is looking to further expand its range of strategies, in addition to growing its private equity business.

US investment bank Merrill Lynch has created a new infrastructure equities index, giving investors convenient access to the projected infrastructure boom in Russia.

Dimitri Psyllidis, co-head of EMEA FICC at Merrill Lynch has left the firm. David Gu was announced as sole head of EMEA FICC.

Despite reporting its first annual loss in 2007 and forecasts of further credit write-downs in the first quarter, Merrill Lynch is getting out the chequebook for its Latin American business.

The latest bout of blood-letting at the bank may only tarnish its reputation further.

The CEO suites of Wall Street have their first vacancy sign since the world learnt what sub-prime means.

The Merrill CEO had to go, but the firm he leaves is much stronger than the one he inherited.

When Stan O’Neal spoke at the Euromoney Forum in London in late June, concerns about the fallout from the sub-prime correction were at their height. In a wide-ranging interview with Euromoney’s editor, Clive Horwood, Merrill Lynch’s chairman and chief executive discussed the market’s reaction to sub-prime, and whether or not the contagion would spread.

The US firm manages to stay ahead of the competition by spearheading innovation, despite the fact that it also dominates the flow business.

Optimism that the launch of collateralized foreign exchange obligations (CFXO) would attract a new range of participants to the market (see Structured products: CFXOs bring in new investors, Euromoney June 2007) now looks well founded. Merrill Lynch says that it attracted more than €1 billion ($1.34 billion) for its recently launched CFXO, which is managed by Crédit Agricole Asset Management. "The deal went much better than we even expected," says Atanas Bostandjiev, managing director and head of structured rates and FX marketing, EMEA, at Merrill. "The roadshow in Europe alone raised the global target. Compared with CDOs that have been launched on non-traditional assets, this has been excellent."

Wall Street investment bankers were agog at the news. Could it really be that Jimmy Quigley, debt capital markets legend and icon of Merrill Lynch’s dominance of the primary bond markets in the 1990s, had become an accountant?

Merrill Lynch’s real estate team is looking decidedly thinner on the ground after a series of recent departures. CMBS head Nassar Hussain has left the bank along with John Bigley and Pascal Richard. They are understood to be heading off to different ventures: Hussain is rumoured to be setting up a Middle East-based property fund.

Hot off the press

Perhaps the biggest name to jump ship in the European debt syndicate world recently has been Marco Baldini. Baldini spent just under 12 years at Barclays Capital of which nearly 11 were on the debt syndicate desk, and he has now moved to Merrill Lynch.

Consolidation, fragmentation and segmentation

Merrill Lynch has appointed John Crompton as managing director and head of equity capital markets for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).