Merrill Lynch promotes Indian-American

New York, July 27: Merrill Lynch and Co., in a major shakeup in three years, has promoted an Indian-American and a native of Turkey to manage global equities and fixed income.

Rohit D'Souza and Osman Semerci will supervise businesses that created more than 40 per cent of the New York-based investment bank's 8.2 billion dollar revenue during the second quarter (April-June).

Mr D'Souza, 42, and Mr Semerci, 38, will take on the new responsibilities of head of equities and chief of fixed income, currencies and commodities respectively shortly, the company announced.

The Indian-American received his bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science from Bethany College in Lindsboro, Kansas.

He joined in October 2004 Merrill Lynch from Morgan Stanley.

In 2005, Mr D'Souza supervised the setting up of the Strategic Risk Trading Group, comprising stock traders who make bets with Merrill Lynch capital.

The group helped raise the company's equity market revenue more than 70 per cent to 3.45 billion dollar in the first half of that year.

Previously, Mr D'Souza worked at the Investment Technology Group, where he was instrumental in building out its agency programme trading capabilities, according information available with Merrill Lynch.

He began his career at Barra, a provider of financial risk management solutions.

Mr Semerci retains his present position, which is based in London, as co-president of global markets and investment banking for Europe, West Asia and Africa. After beginning his career 16 years ago as an equity trader in Istanbul and commodity trader in Switzerland, He was hired by Merrill Lynch in 1992 as a financial consultant at the brokerage division in Geneva.

He has a master's degree in management from Istanbul's Marmara University and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Booazici Univeristy.

Merrill Lynch also announced that three executives in sales and trading will leave the company.

The last major shakeup at Merrill Lynch took place in August 2003, when Chief Executive Office Stanley O'Neal replaced Arshad Zakaria.

UNI