Tuesday, September 16, 2008

New Bull in Town

The Bank of America takes over Merrill Lynch. A mega-retailer swallows up a large broker/merchant.

BoA was a wholly minor retail player in Asia.....so over-whelmed that it sold off it's branches in Hong Kong & Macau to China Construction Bank some years ago. But now BoA may be a force to be reckoned with as amidst all the hi-profile ML units it now owns is the Private Client Group. Here is an eviable client list with combined assets which probably exceed that of ML's own capitalization (if it only they were declared funds! LOL). With established claws in Latam, Indonesia, Russia, the PRC and in roads into India, here is where BOA may have bought the shot to become bigger than Citigroup.

And since bigger is not necessarily better, I see mass exodus from the PCG.