Merrill Lynch's recent appointment of Marc Pinto as its new head of credit research for the Americas, led to the demotion of Clare Schiedermayer, who had been promoted to the position just over six months ago (BW, 1/13). Schiedermayer stays on as managing director and retail analyst.
The consensus among several people close to Merrill's research group is that Schiedermayer was demoted in response to the recent departures of four highly-regarded junk analysts: Christy Parsons, George Chalhoub (BW, 5/26) Jeff Skoglund (BW, 6/11) and Oren Cohen (BW, 6/13). They all declined comment. Six people close to the group say Schiedermayer's performance as a manager was not the principal reason for the departures, though three of the six complain that she was too bureaucratic as a manager and all six complained about Merrill's management of its high-yield research and fixed-income businesses generally. Schiedermayer declined comment.
Calls to Tom Sowanick, head of global fixed-income research, and Bob McCann, head of global securities research and economics, were referred to Melanie Begelman, a Merrill spokeswoman, who declined to discuss the reason for Schiedermeyer's demotion.