Anxiety. It’s an unpleasant word that makes people squirm, but in 2008, when Bank of America and Merrill Lynch announced their merger, in all honesty, that was the word on the minds of Jeff Markham and Richard Holt.
“I think there was anxiousness just because of what was going on in the financial markets the weekend this was announced,” says Markham, regional managing director of Merrill Lynch’s Texas region.
From an employee perspective, whenever there’s a big merger like this, anxiety creeps in as to the future of their jobs, but Holt, Dallas market president for Bank of America, and Markham were quick to recognize the realities of the situation. On Markham’s side, he had 500 financial advisers, and Holt had 10 client managers, so in reality, the two sides could actually work together and not worry about losing their jobs.
“There was some anxiety because of the market conditions, but because of the respect both companies had for each other, we complemented each other so well,” Holt says. “We didn’t have this big overlap of services that typically requires some reduction in force. We didn’t have any of that, so most of our teammates responded very enthusiastically. Put yourself in a commercial banker’s shoes — if you had 500 financial advisers out there that could make a referral for you, life couldn’t get easier.”
It was on this foundation that the two leaders began moving both sides forward when the merger occurred on Jan. 1, 2009.
