Merrill makes additions to EMEA equity-linked group

Merrill Lynch has made a number of appointments to its Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) equity-linked group in London. All will report directly or indirectly to Harry Lengsfield, head of EMEA global markets.

Tobias Gehrke, Andrew Song, Daniel Cangemi, Geir Espeskog, Matt Renirie and Michael Ebert have all joined Merrill from Goldman Sachs. Gehrke leads the institutional derivatives sales effort to UK, Scandinavian and Benelux clients, while Espeskog focuses on selling derivatives to Scandinavian and Benelux customers. Song heads the index vanilla trading desk, with Ebert focusing on trading Eurostoxx50 options while Cangemi focuses on trading exotics, a desk headed by Matthew Porter.

Renirie’s focus is on hedge funds, primarily volatility arbitrage clients. Also working on hedge funds are Mike Ward, from Lehman Brothers, who will deal primarily with long/short hedge sales, and Andreas Konomis, previously at Prime Financial Services.

Tobias Hupfauer, Gene Linetsky and Elias Jaeggi join from UBS. Hupfauer sells derivatives to German and Austrian institutions, and is joined in this role by Alex Trojanow, previously at Royal Bank of Canada. Jaeggi joins as a warrants trader, under Michael Hull.

Linetsky focuses on structured equity products in emerging European regions. In addition, Donald Leitch joins the bank to head the structuring and operation desk, focusing on expanding the product range in exotic equity and fund derivatives markets, from Commerzbank. Also focusing on structured products are Evran Mersin, marketing structured solutions to northern and emerging European retail institutions, who arrives from Credit Suisse First Boston, and Marco Stauffacher, selling structured products to Swiss institutions, joining from Lehman Brothers.

Gwenael Fort joins Merrill Lynch from Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein to trade European convertible bonds, while from Banco Santander, Ethel Chicharro Sanchez arrives in a derivatives sales role.