Merrill Lynch Australiais steadily bolstering its ranks with the appointment of 20 new staff across its various businesses in light of improving equity markets and a more favourable outlook for global growth.
The appointments, according to Merrill Lynch Australia chief executive officer Kevin Skelton, are across the firm’s global markets and institutional banking, global private clients and investment management operations.
“With markets picking up in Australia and globally, we have been selectively adding staff in all businesses,” Skelton says.
According to Skelton, the move to boost personnel in all areas is to synchronise growth throughout the business rather than just in one division, which he says can create potential problems at a later stage.
“You don’t want to hire in the investment banking area without adding hiring in debt equity, just like you don’t want to hire in equities without hiring researchers,” Skelton says.
The new hires include two senior appointments in the investment banking business, a listed property trust analyst, and a collection of new people in its private client operations.
The group is also in the process of signing-up a small caps analyst.
Merrill Lynch has over 650 staff in the Asia region across Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore, and manages over $800 billion globally.
