Sontag to hit the bricks as Krawcheck gets set to take BoA's top WM slot. Merrill Lynch's private-client chief Daniel Sontag is leaving the Bank of America-owned business. Sontag told Merrill branch managers of his intention to leave in a conference call on Tuesday. The departure coincides with other high-level changes at Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, including the appointment of former Citigroup executive Sallie Krawcheck to run Bank of America's wealth- and investment-management division, which includes Merrill and U.S. Trust.

Twenty months

So Krawcheck would have been Sontag's boss.

Sontag replaced McIntyre Gardner as head of Merrill's private-client business in the Americas early in 2008. Early this year, he replaced his former boss Robert McCann as head of Merrill's Global Wealth Management (GWM) division when McCann left shortly after Bank of America completed its acquisition of Merrill.

Merrill came into the Bank of America merger with about 17,000 brokers; Bank of America had another 2,000 registered reps. Aside from a top-slot shuffle at Bank of America, several of Sontag's GWM colleagues have exited the firm in recent weeks. Investment-platform specialist Mitch Cox left for London-based Barclays Wealth's U.S. division. Thomas Lee, head of product origination, Steven Houston, head of product sales, and Paul Morton, head of stock and bond sales, are also among the recently departed.

Sontag joined Merrill in 1978. In 2001 he was put in charge of efforts to diversify revenue and increase service customization within Merrill's retail-brokerage business across 700 North American and Latin American offices.

Bank of America, a recipient of more than $45 billion in bailout funding underwritten by U.S. taxpayers, is reported to be under pressure from the U.S. government to improve its performance. -FWR

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