Merrill brings its private-banking bag to Boston

FWR Staff

21 March 2007

Wall Street firm targets seventh city on its own list of top wealth centers. Merrill Lynch has opened a private-banking office in Boston to provide investment and credit services to private clients with at least $10 million in investable assets. Headed by Doug Revere, New England regional director for Merrill's private banking and investment group, the office has a staff of 32, and already accounts for about $7 billion in client assets.

Familiar names

"The market opportunity is wonderful here," says Revere. "Boston is very important to this organization."

Merrill's private-banking office is the latest in a spurt of wealth-management activity in the New England metropolis. Boston ranks seventh on Merrill's annual list of American "millionaire" cities, with over 4,400 households worth at least $10 million.

Though Boston has a long list of boutique wealth-management practices -- some of them generations old, others comparative upstarts -- including an unusual number of law firms, it is also headquarters to the wealth-management divisions of several national firms including Pittsburgh-based Mellon Financial, Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America and homegrown Boston Private Financial.

Big-name out-of-towners with offices in Boston include JPMorgan Private Bank, Northern Trust and the Bank of New York . SEI seems to have failed in an attempt to establish a multifamily office there.

Merrill Lynch has eight brokerage offices in the Boston area, catering, for the most part, to mass-affluent clients and lower-tier millionaires. -FWR

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