Bank of America Merrill Lynch announced this morning that it has promoted Matthew Koder to president of its Asia-Pacific business and that Brian Brille, who has held the role since 2009, will become chairman.
BoA Merrill hired veteran investment banker Koder last March. Formerly head of global capital markets at UBS, he joined BoA Merrill as its head of global corporate investment banking for Asia-Pacific in what was then a new position.
Koder relocated from London to Hong Kong in the summer, marking a return to the city. Before joining UBS in 2003, he had spent 10 years at Goldman Sachs, four of those with the equity capital markets team in Hong Kong.
He quickly started to reshape the team, hiring two colleagues from UBS and shedding others, who would say upon departure that they didn’t fit with the new Koder culture. For example, on the equity capital markets side, the bank has hired James Fleming, who previously worked with Koder at UBS, as co-head of Asia equity capital markets alongside Jason Cox. Soon afterwards, the bank hired former UBS syndicate banker Philip Wong, as well.
Of course, while outsiders see that he brought in UBS people, at BoA Merrill he was tasked with integrating the corporate bank, treasury services operation and investment banking. Success on this front evidently has propelled him into this new job — in just one year’s time.
He will now add the equities, FICC and wealth management business to his portfolio and take responsibility for continuing the growth, reporting to Tom Montag, co-chief operating officer at Bank of America.
But critics say: what about the deals? When are they coming along?
BoA Merrill can point to two debt deals from the past week — it was a joint bookrunner on Hyundai Capital Services’ sale of $500 million of five-and-a-half-year bonds and on Berau Coal Energy’s $500 million bond issue. Equity capital markets have, to be fair, been relatively quiet. And as for M&A, it was on the buy-side of Sany Heavy’s landmark acquisition of Putzmeister.
An insider said the firm has been involved in lots of deals. Sure, they haven’t come to market yet, but that doesn’t mean they are not coming. In effect, said the source, the critics need to give Koder time.
BoA Merrill also points out that despite global uncertainties in 2011, investment banking fees for BoA Merrill in Asia-Pacific (including Japan and including Australia) were $438 million, which put them at seventh in the fee pool league tables. This is only a slight decline of 5.6% from the $464 million it earned in 2010, when it also ranked seventh.
Given that Koder is known as a dealmaker, he has probably earned some leeway — but this will be the year to see if he delivers on the deal front. He has definitely shown his hand at streamlining. In January, 15 MDs were cut from the firm in an effort to slim down the business. Globally, BoA Merrill is striving to eliminate 30,000 jobs during the next few years as part of an effort to cut $5 billion from its annual costs by 2014.
Brille, meanwhile, is going to focus more on relations back to the US and clients in Asia — which makes sense as he was from BoA and made his name as an M&A banker. Indeed, when BoA Merrill appointed Brille as its president for Asia-Pacific in 2009, soon after the merger of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, the move was viewed by the industry as BoA showing its muscle. Inside the firm in Asia, Brille was seen as the man with connections back to Charlotte.
