Ex-Legg Mason regional director to lead M and T's private-client business. Jeffrey Durkee -- most recently chairman of Baltimore-based Mercantile Bankshares' Investment & Wealth Management division and until last spring a Legg Mason regional director -- has switched teams again.

Bigger

Durkee is now president of Buffalo, N.Y.-based M&T Bank's Investment Group, which has around $142 billion in assets under management. That's about seven times bigger than Mercantile's wealth-management group.

Durkee's latest move follows hard on the completion early the month of Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial's takeover of Mercantile.

Bonnie Stein, now in charge of Mercantile's investment and wealth-management distribution network, will step into Durkee's shoes.

Before replacing Margaret Preston as head of Mercantile's wealth business in May 2006, Durkee was head of Baltimore-based Legg Mason's Southern U.S. region and a board member of the firm's principal retail brokerage platform until it became part of Citigroup's Smith Barney late in 2005. He began his career in 1981 as a broker with Merrill Lynch in Atlanta, and held management positions in Akron, Ohio, Corpus Christi, Texas, Los Angeles and Princeton, N.J., before joining Legg Mason in 1998.

Preston is now a New York-based executive with the Private Ban k of Bank of America.

In his new role, Durkee will oversee the M&T's Baltimore-based MTB Group of Funds, its investment advisor MTB Investment Advisors and the bank's private-client division. -FWR

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