Chase Securities Inc., building up its new mergers-and-acquisitions group, has snared an adviser who worked on major deals at Merrill Lynch & Co.
Douglas Braunstein, 36, was named a managing director at Chase, where he will lead the M&A group's work with multinational corporations. He brings the number of staff members in the group to 75, including four senior professionals.
At Merrill, where he was a managing director specializing in health care M&A, Mr. Braunstein worked on two of last years' largest mergers-the $7.3 billion acquisition of Duracell International Inc. by Gillette Co., and Aetna Life & Casualty Co.'s $8.1 billion acquisition of U.S. Healthcare Inc.
"The goal is for Chase to continue to hire selected top-notch M&A professionals," said Mark Davis, the former co-head of M&A at Salomon Brothers who joined Chase one year ago.
Mr. Davis, a managing director and head of the firm's global M&A group, also recently brought in David B. Edleson of Goldman, Sachs & Co.'s financial institutions group, Daniel Goggins of Morgan Stanley & Co., and David Cohen of SBC Warburg Inc. as managing directors.
Chase's M&A shop is "still in the early stages of building," said Raphael Soifer, a bank analyst with Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. "Chase seems to be doing a good job of capitalizing on the high-yield relationships, but it takes a while to broaden those relationships."
Though traditional corporate banking relationships typically involve chief financial officers or treasurers, landing M&A business requires higher-level contacts with chairmen, chief executive officers, and directors, said Mr. Soifer. Appointments of professionals who bring those contacts, such as Mr. Braunstein, are key to generating M&A business.
Chase worked on Westinghouse Electric Corp.'s $3.9 billion acquisition of Infinity Broadcasting Corp., which according to Houlihan Lokey's Mergerstat was the 15th-largest deal announced in 1996.
Meanwhile Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has hired Jose Barrionuevo from Chase to lead its emerging markets fixed-income strategy and research group.
Lehman has lost seven Latin America analysts this year, as well as John Welch, its chief emerging markets economist, who went to Paribas Capital Markets.
Mr. Barrionuevo was at Chase for two and a half years. Before that he was with the International Monetary Fund.
