page_title: Andrea Orcel
section_title: Merrill Lynch
hierarchical_section_title: Andrea Orcel / Career / Merrill Lynch
caption_attribution_description: Merrill Lynch
context_page_description: Andrea Orcel is an Italian investment banker who most recently served as the president of UBS Investment Bank from November 2014 to September 2018. He was slated to succeed José Antonio Alvarez as chief executive of Spanish bank Banco Santander from September 2018 to January 2019. Since early 2020, Orcel has been linked to taking over as CEO at a variety of financial institutions including starting his own boutique investment bank.
  Born in Rome, Italy, Orcel attended the University of Rome, Sapienza, graduating with degrees in economics and commerce. He attended the INSEAD business school in Paris before working at Goldman Sachs and Boston Consulting Group during the late 1980s. In 1992, he was hired by Merrill Lynch & Co. where he spent the succeeding twenty years in their mergers and acquisitions department in London. He left Merrill Lynch in 2012 to join Swiss investment bank UBS at the behest of its CEO, Sergio Ermotti. From 2012 to 2018, Orcel endured the 2013 Libor trading scandal, led a corporate restructuring, downsized the bank, and increased up M&A activity.
  Orcel is a controversial figure in European business and international banking.
context_section_description: Upon his graduation, Orcel was hired by American investment bank Goldman Sachs in 1988, aged 25, to work in their fixed income business in London. A year later he left the firm to work as a senior consultant at Boston Consulting Group from 1989 to 1992 in their corporate restructuring and strategy departments in Paris, France. In 1992, he was asked to join Merrill Lynch & Co. in their Financial Institutions Group (FIG) back in London. Orcel orchestrated the $25 billion (€21.2 billion) merger of Italian banking groups, Credito Italiano and UniCredito to form banking conglomerate UniCredit in 1998. UniCredito had originally wanted to go public but the valuation that investment bankers at a rival bank gave it made them "unhappy". Orcel called the bank and offered to explore the possibility of a merger with a comparable company as the initial deal was going through; he brought them to Merrill Lynch a week later. The merger made UniCredit the largest bank in Italy. The following year he personally closed the $13 billion (€11 billion) merger of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya and Argentaria to create BBVA. BBVA became the second largest bank in Spain after the merger. Orcel served as the head of the Global FIG from 2003 to 2007, succeeding Joseph Willit. In 2004, Orcel initiated Spanish bank Santander's acquisition of British subsidiary Abbey National, expanding the banks operations into the United Kingdom in a deal worth $15.56 billion (£13.8 billion). He was tapped by the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) in 2007 to advise on a $55 billion (£49 billion) acquisition of ABN Amro. The deal was orchestrated by Orcel after he brought in Fortis and Santander to execute a three-way consortium bid for ABN Amro. At the time, the bid set a record for the largest merger or acquisition in financial services history. For the acquisition, Orcel collected $12 million (£7.5 million) in advisory fees. Months later, the oncoming financial crisis surfaced, quickly absorbing the capital buffers of banks all over the world, causing major damage to RBS and forcing the UK Government to seize control of it. The deal was dubbed "disastrous" by The Telegraph while Institutional Investor labeled Orcel "one of the most controversial bankers of the financial crisis". For his role increasing advisory service business throughout 2007, Orcel was paid $38 million (£33 million). 
  In November 2008, Orcel's team at Merrill valued the Italian bank Banca Antonveneta at $10 billion (€9 billion), advising Monte dei Paschi (MPS) to acquire it from Santander for the same amount. Internal valuations of the bank at Santander had Banca Antonveneta valued at $7.4 billion (€6.5 billion). The deal was described as ill-advised and "flawed" as MPS overpaid $2.85 billion (€2.5 billion) for its new acquisition, leaving it with capital deficiencies in 2016. In 2008, in the middle of the financial crisis, it was reported that Orcel brought in $550 million (€483 million) in advisory fees for the bank, earning him an annual bonus of $33 to $34 million (€29 million). His bonus sparked an investigation into executive compensation by the New York Attorney General; no charges were brought forward against Orcel or Merrill Lynch. In July 2008, Orcel rejoined Santander to advise it in its $1.6 billion (€1.45 billion) acquisition of Alliance & Leicester, a British bank and former building society. On January 30, 2009, Santander hired Orcel once more to complete their acquisition of Sovereign Bank, in a deal valued roughly at $1.9 billion (€1.4 billion). His relationship with Santander's executive chairman, Emilio Botín, was reported as being particularly close during this time; Botín sent handwritten thank you notes to Orcel after each deal. Orcel, in turn, felt "emotionally attached" to the bank and the Botín family. In 2009, Orcel was asked to serve as the executive chairman of the investment bank eventually being appointed chief executive of European Card Services. In February 2011, Orcel brokered the $3.3 billion (€2.9 billion) initial public offering (IPO) of a 10% stake of VTB Bank from the 
caption: Orcel worked at Merrill Lynch & Co. from 1992 to 2012, a firm that was acquired by Bank of America in 2009 to create Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
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