Ouch!

Things are going from bad to worse at Bank of America Merrill Lynch's European investment banking team.

This year the hyper bullish investment bank has advised on three high-profile, European "bear hugs" that have gone nowhere. Those bear hugs were: Pfizer's £70 billion bid for AstraZeneca; Weir Group's attempt to merge with Finland's Metso as part of a £8.5 billion deal; and Destination Maternity's £300m tilt for Mothercare.

Now, BAML has just been publicly sacked by Weir Group for landing a corporate broking mandate (I am told back in June) with rival IMI and failing to tell the Scottish company about the role.

Here is a link to Weir Group's statement: http://www.investegate.co.uk/weir-group-plc--weir-/gnw/statement-re-corporate-broker-engagement/20140804070022H6099/

Most of this morning's newspaper coverage has touched on the fact that Weir Group's decision to separate from BAML may have also been driven, in part, by the fact that IMI had tentative discussions about merging with the Scottish company at the beginning of the year.

I wonder where that idea came from? Betaville, perhaps:

http://betaville123.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/more-weir-group-gossip.html