Prior to March, Antico had been head of Americas rates and currencies at BAML for three-years, having joined Merrill Lynch from Deutsche Bank in 2007, where he was the US head of interest rate options trading. Antico was regarded as an interest rate specialist. A BAML spokesperson declined to comment on his departure.
Antico is the latest in a series of departures, and notable arrivals, at the bank this year, particularly in foreign exchange. In May, the firm hired the former co-head of global G10 foreign exchange sales at Goldman Sachs, Kevin Connors. The following month, David Gu, the global head of rates and currencies, retired from the firm, while, Neh Thaker, who ran structured rates and FX globally, and was regarded as Gu’s No. 2, followed two months later.
Additionally, Mark Webster, head of European FX sales since 2002, Graham Wintersgill, head of European FX institutional sales since 2009, and Richard Elliott, head of electronic FX options trading, who had only joined in early 2010, also left the bank over the summer months.
The global markets division of BAML has gone through something of a transformation in recent years under the stewardship of Thomas Montag, who joined Merrill Lynch in April 2008, having five-months earlier retired from Goldman Sachs after a 22-year career, where his last position was as global co-head of securities.
As a measure of his success, and influence, he was earlier this month promoted to co-chief operating officer, while maintaining his existing position. It was a move, largely seen as part of CEO Brian Moynihan’s succession plan. His promotion comes on the back of making the global banking and markets division one of the most profitable parts of the bank. While BAML has just announced a record $8.8 billion quarterly loss, Montag’s business has been making money. It posted a net income of $10 billion in the 18-months ended June 30.
Over this period, BAML’s market’s division has started to take on more of a Goldman Sachs look. In 2009 the bank hired Chris Bae from Goldman, along with Tom Gillie from Credit Suisse to run its global options business. They also added Doug Horlick and Michael Dubno from Goldman, to run FX sales in the US and the global markets technology team respectively. In March this year, they hired Craig Reynolds, also from Goldman, to run the North American rates trading business. Connors became the most recent addition two months later.
In an interview in May, Antico told EuromoneyFXNews that the firm had ambitious plans to boost revenues from its FX business, by ramping up its investment in electronic delivery platforms. This was part of a strategy to do more business with existing clients, and catch up with some of its main rivals such as Citi, which in the US had overtaken them as the No.1 FX bank with US corporations in this year’s Euromoney FX survey. Their overall position was unchanged at 12th on the Euromoney rankings. The biggest bright spot for BAML had been the 130% increase in the business it did with real money clients, and an improved ranking of 8th, from 15th the previous year.
BAML is now into its second year of building an e-commerce platform presence, under Dubno, with Liam Hudson, hired from Barclays Capital, to run its global electronic FX offering, while Elliott, hired from Credit Suisse, was his equivalent in options trading, before he left in June.
Antico said in May that he expected to make up ground quite quickly, increasing daily trading volumes significantly within a few months. BAML declined to give details of any forecast increase in volumes, or any potential percentage increase in revenues it expected to achieve with its FX single dealer platform, named MERCURY.
BAML has 160,000 customers nationwide who manage payments through its banking network, yet only a minority do FX conversions through it. BAML has begun to roll out its own FX application to those customers. “We want to be on the desktop of every major commercial customer across the country,” Antico said in May.