Brokerage to provide wealthiest clients with guidance on wealth structuring. Merrill Lynch has laid the groundwork for new offering to its French private clients by hiring former BNP Paribas executive Sandra Ortmans to provide advice on wealth structuring.

Third leg

Working with other Merrill's Global Wealth Management (GWM) group professionals, Ortmans will provide the U.S. wealth-management giant's wealthiest clients in France with strategies for pensions, tax-efficient investing and estate and succession planning.

Ortmans filled a similar role at Paris-based BNP Paribas.

Bringing wealth structuring to France puts Merrill's operation there in line with the wirehouse's three-prong approach to wealth management. This encompasses brokerage services, investment management and high-touch and "holistic" advice -- guidance that's supposed to cover the client's entire "wealth picture," including his short- and long-term goals.

On the brokerage side of its French wealth-management business, Merrill has also hired Cyril Duquenne and Cyril Lejeune. Duquenne was a private-banking team member at Lazard Frères Gestion; Lejeune comes to Merrill from Morgan Stanley.

Merrill's new hires report to Gilles Dard, head of GWM in Northern Europe. -FWR

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