Man, if you have been following the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch saga since last fall, the following graf on the departure of another top ML exec from BofA by Uptown paper of record banking reporter Rick Rothacker stops you in your tracks:
The loss of top executives is not surprising because Bank of America is known for imposing its cost-conscious culture on the companies it has acquired. Bank of America chief executive Ken Lewis has long expressed trepidation about buying investment banks because of the potential for culture clashes.
Really? That’s a helluva scoop Rick has sat on lo these many months. In fact, back in September while Meck Deck readers got reality-based skepticism about the fit, the Uptown paper was all too ready to parrot Lewis’ claims that ML’s brokerage structure was the “crown jewel” of the merger and that Lewis had suddenly changed his opinion of compensation-heavy investment banking operations like Merrill.
Rothacker even claimed that BofA’s ability to retain ML’s structure was the key to making the merger a success. More from September’s happy-talk spin:
Overall, Bank of America has $867 billion in client assets, compared to Merrill’s $1.6 trillion.
That’s why Lewis said Bank of America plans to keep the well-known Merrill Lynch brand and organization. The company, however, has provided few other details about what the combination would look like, including the management structure. … For the merger to go smoothly, Bank of America needs to send a strong message that little will change for Merrill in the combined company, said Stephen Winks of Richmond, Va.-based Advisory Practice Services, an industry consulting firm. “You don’t want to alienate the brokers,” he said.
Yet barely four months later it is “not surprising” that BofA is imposing its corporate culture on ML. Gee, it sure sounds like that whatever BofA claims to be the case at a given moment, the Uptown paper reports without question.
Talk about not surprising.
Bonus Observation: Prediction, Ken Lewis is going to have to choose between John Thain and the rest of ML. He cannot keep both.
