Bank of America Merrill Lynch decided at the beginning of last year that the cross-sell opportunities offered between debt capital markets and corporate banking were too numerous to ignore. The result was that the two functions – the flagship offerings of the two merged banks – were combined.

Paul Richards, a career Merrill banker apart from a short stint at Goldman Sachs in the early 1990s, has been leading the business from the beginning. Fernando Vicario, who joined Bank of America in 1995, became his co-head last June.