Wealth management veteran Jerry Miller has been appointed as head of Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management Americas.

Wealth management veteran Jerry Miller has been appointed as head of Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management Americas, as the German bank expands its global asset and wealth management division - following unsuccessful plans to sell parts of the business last year.

The role is newly-created, the firm confirmed.

Based in New York, Miller will report to Michele Faissola, who heads up Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management. Miller will also join the DA&WM executive committee, and chair the Americas and North America executive committees, Deutsche Bank said.

"Under his [Miller's] leadership, we will continue to expand our Americas business, giving more clients the chance to benefit from our global asset and wealth management expertise," Faissola said. 

Miller is latterly of Lightyear Capital, which he joined in July of last year. There, he was a senior advisor responsible for the acquisition of financial services companies, focused on investment management and wealth management firms.

Prior to Lightyear Capital, Miller was a division director at Morgan Stanley’s global wealth management group, ending his stint there as president and CEO of Van Kampen Investments. Earlier still, he worked at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he held multiple leadership roles within the investment and wealth management businesses.

Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management

In February last year, Deutsche Bank entered into exclusive talks with Guggenheim Partners, the US-based investment firm, over the sale of its asset management business. The business units under discussion were DWS Americas, the Americas mutual fund business; DB Advisors, the global institutional asset management business; Deutsche Insurance Asset Management, the global insurance asset management business; and RREEF, the global alternative asset management business.

The following April, a spokesperson at the firm said negotiatians were "well on track," but talks over RREEF came to an end in June after both parties failed to agree on sale terms, and Deutsche has since unified these businesses under the Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management brand.

Meanwhile, in other recent news, Deutsche hired Raphael Zagury as head of key client partners and wealth investment advisory for Latin America in March – a new position at the bank.

Zagury left Merrill Lynch and it is set to join Deutsche Bank in June, based in New York. In his new role, he will work with ultra high net worth clients in Latin America on investments, with Mexico and Brazil being important UHNW markets within the wider region.

Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management manages a portfolio of nearly $400 billion of invested assets for clients in North and Latin America, and has about €944 billion ($1.2 trillion) in assets under management, as at end-December 2012.  

The division offers individuals and institutions traditional and alternative investments, and provides wealth management and private banking services to high net worth individuals and family offices.