Bank of America Combines U.S. Leveraged-Loan Sales Forces

June 02, 2011, 7:02 AM EDT By Kristen Haunss

June 2 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp., the largest underwriter of U.S. leveraged loans this year, combined most of its loan sales forces into one team and named Douglas Antonacci and Howard Sysler to jointly head the group.

The team that had been responsible for selling loans in the secondary market will join with members of the one that markets new institutional term loans, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg News. Kerrie McHugh, a Bank of America spokeswoman, confirmed the contents of the memo.

Bank of America is merging the two groups in an effort to give clients a single point of contact for multiple types of loan-sales transactions, according to a person familiar with the changes, who declined to be identified because the information isn’t public. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank controls 16.4 percent of the U.S. leveraged-loan market compared with JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s 14.9 percent share, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“This new structure will benefit our sales, trading and new issue businesses, as well as improve synergies between our loan origination and sales teams,” according to the memo from David Flannery, head of global leveraged finance, Graham Goldsmith, head of global loans and special situations group and Bryan Weadock, co-head of global fixed-income commodities and currencies sales.

Bank of America’s primary loan sales team will be responsible for the remainder of new issue loans and will remain part of the global capital markets group, according to the memo.

Antonacci and Sysler are both based in New York and will report to Steve Hollender and Gerry Walker, co-heads of credit sales.

Among the largest loans Bank of America has helped arrange this year is a $2.7 billion term loan for Del Monte Foods Co. The bank also was part the financing group on $7.5 billion in loans and bonds last month for Chrysler Group LLC.

This year, $279.9 billion of leveraged loans have been issued in the U.S., Bloomberg data show. That’s an 87 percent increase from the same time period last year, according to the data.

--Editors: Chapin Wright, Mitchell Martin

To contact the reporter on this story: Kristen Haunss in New York at khaunss@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Faris Khan at fkhan33@bloomberg.net

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