Merrill Lynch has appointed Ronald Meraz as head of its office of diversity for global wealth management. He succeeds Colbert Narcisse, who was recently named chief administrative officer for global origination and chief operating officer for Americas Origination.

Merrill created the diversity office in June last year after settlement talks broke down in a lawsuit accusing the US full-service brokerage of discriminating against African-American brokers.

The company said the office would design programmes and policies to foster diversity, set standards for judging progress, and create an in-house system for resolving disputes.

Mr Narcisse headed the diversity office since its inception. Before that he was chief operating officer of Merrill's global private client group.

Mr Meraz, who joined Merrill Lynch in 1991, was previously managing director of the New York International Complex, which includes five offices in New York, California and Israel. He oversaw 122 financial advisors working in more than 48 countries.