MERRILL Lynch has gone on a multi-million dollar poaching campaign that includes four senior Goldman Sachs executives and two from Salomon Brothers.
The company said it was part of a normal recruiting programme, but others in the industry believed it was patching up weaknesses to strengthen its push for the lucrative overseas institutional market.
The Goldman Sachs employees joining the company are J W Nam, a former executive director of investment banking; Tsunehisa Namba, executive director of fixed income sales; S Min Cho, an executive director of corporate finance; and Kester Ng, an associate in the equity capital markets group.
Salomon is losing Steven Wong, a director of fixed income sales, and Leong Mun-wai, a vice-president of institutional sales.
Others joining Merrill are Samuel Lin, the head of securities trading for the Bank of America; Choon Hong Tee, the head of North Asia marketing for J P Morgan; and Kwan Sun, a vice-president in Morgan's North Asia marketing team.
The nine new staff will be taking up similar positions in Merrill.