Bank of America global commodities staff exodus continues

Two senior executives of BofA have gone from Singapore including some sales staff according to Reuters.

This is the second time in about six months the bank's commodities business has suffered mass departures. The managing director of commodities business for Asia Pacific, Diego Parilla, and the co-head of global oil trading, Mitch Rubenstein, both of whom have been in their positions for about three years, left in the past two to three weeks, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

Reuters said, the other departures are mostly from the bank's Power and Gas division as well as some sales staff, with four to five personnel from each of its three trading centres in Singapore, London and the United States.

"This is the second time that there are mass departures from BofA in six months, involving their commodities business. The first time, it was mostly people from the U.S. and Europe while this time, it's quite distributed globally," one source said.

"Most of those who left are from the power and gas division, including two from the Singapore office, which looks after the Australia market, while others are sales staff whose jobs are to bring in customer flows from end users."

Those who left are presently on gardening leave of one to three months, the sources said.

Rubenstein, an oil industry veteran who joined Merrill Lynch as its global head of oil trading in 2008 before it was acquired by BofA during the global financial crisis, had introduced the trading of physical oil, mainly crude.

Following his departure, former co-head Thomas Andersen is now the global head of oil trading.

Parilla, a Merrill Lynch veteran, had been the managing director of its Asia-Pacific commodities business since 2009, appointed to the job after the BofA acquisition.

The sources said a replacement has yet to be named.