NEWS: Banking role for Merrill Lynch’s comms chief

Richard Spiegelberg, Merrill Lynch’s long-standing communications chief

is to head a new communications team for the firm’s international

private banking group.

Spiegelberg, currently director of marketing and communications for the

US investment giant’s Europe, Middle East and Africa function, said his

new job would be a ‘senior role within the organisation’.

‘Our international private banking group has expanded considerably over

the last few years and it is now considered strategically appropriate to

build up communications in that part of the organisation,’ he said.

Spiegelberg, whose team has grown from three to seven since he joined

Merrill Lynch nine years ago, said it was too early to confirm how he

would develop the department.

‘It is a question of defining what the priorities are and then looking

at what sort of resources are required,’ he said.

Spiegelberg, who dismissed national newspaper accounts that his salary

was in the pounds 250,000 bracket, said that Merrill Lynch was looking

externally to recruit his successor. He added that he anticipated

staying in his current job for another few months until the new post-

holder was in place.