Jay Weintraub will retire at the end of the month from Merrill Lynch, where he is a managing director and U.S. bank analyst. Weintraub, 54, was formerly the co-head of investment grade research, but was relieved of his managerial responsibilities during a recent reshuffling of the credit research group (BW, 1/13). He has spent 11 years at Merrill. Previously he spent eight years at Salomon Smith Barney. "Coming up on 20 years is a long time on the sell-side. I felt like I wanted to do something else. What it will be I don't know yet," he says.
Weintraub was considered a candidate for the position of head of fixed-income credit research for the Americas, according to one person at the firm. The position was given last week to Marc Pinto, the former research chief for Europe, Africa and the Middle East (see related story, page 3). Weintraub says his decision is unrelated to the appointment of Pinto. "The decision to bring Marc to the group followed my decision," he says.
Weintraub has been a runner-up or better every year since 1990 on the Institutional Investor All-America Fixed-Income research team. Matthew Burnell, who covers finance companies, will assume responsibility for Weintraub's coverage, according to one analyst at Merrill. A call to Burnell was not returned. Tom Sowanick, head of global fixed-income research, was on vacation last week and could not be reached for comment.