Meissner hires co-heads for BofAML Europe
CHRISTIAN Meissner, the global corporate and investment banking head at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, has appointed two of his former charges to become co-heads of the bank’s investment banking arm for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Meissner is hiring Diego de Giorgi from Goldman Sachs and is promoting Bob Elfring, with whom he worked at Lehman. Elfring currently runs investment banking in the Benelux region and northern Europe.
The appointments will be seen as key for Bank of America Merrill Lynch following a series of high-level departures in London over the past few months.
The two most senior men in corporate broking, Mark Astaire and Simon Fraser, have both departed the group and recently Andrea Orcel, one of the bank’s most charismatic investment bankers, left for UBS.
Meissner used to do the European investment banking job himself before being promoted to the global role. Before he become global head he had hired a number of people from his most recent employer, Nomura.
“Christian was hired to hire,” said an insider, “and he knows and trusts these people he has worked with before.”
Meissner used to be at Goldman prior to his tenure at Nomura and he knows de Giorgi well from working with him there. Despite the recent staff changes, Bank of America Merrill Lynch comes second in the latest Dealogic tables of Investment Bank net revenues in Europe in the first half of the year, published yesterday.
The bank led the UniCredit rights issue and was sole adviser on a £1.2bn sale of shares in Reckitt Benckiser.