Merrill Hired a Private Banker Managing $2.2 Billion at J.P. Morgan in San Francisco

By Intersection Advisory · Advisor Moves

Published: April 8, 2026

Category: Advisor Moves

Merrill Lynch hired a J.P. Morgan private banker in San Francisco who AdvisorHub reported was managing $2.2 billion. The story ran on April 8, 2026. A Merrill spokesperson confirmed the hire. A source told AdvisorHub the banker produced $4.1 million in annual revenue. Those are the two figures the piece actually puts on the practice, and they are not the same kind of number.

The banker is Peter C. Laidlaw. He joined Merrill's private wealth unit and reports to Tracy Murphy, regional managing director for the Private Wealth West market, according to the spokesperson. AdvisorHub, citing BrokerCheck, said Laidlaw first registered with UBS Wealth Management USA in 2012, then worked at Jefferies and Goldman Sachs before joining J.P. Morgan in 2019. Neither Laidlaw nor a JPMorgan spokesperson responded to AdvisorHub. The move is a single private banker, not a team with support staff listed in the story.

Merrill has been telling the market it wants experienced producers. AdvisorHub noted that Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan said in January that Merrill co-presidents Lindsay Hans and Eric Schimpf had put aggressive targets on net new asset flow. The same story said Merrill, the week before, had also recruited a UBS broker in Miami who managed $645 million into the private wealth unit. That Miami figure is a different hire. It should not be added to the $2.2 billion.

The harder question is what $2.2 billion means when the person leaving is a private banker rather than a broker with a portable book. AdvisorHub said wirehouses sometimes hire private bankers even though some customers are more closely tied to the bank and harder to transfer. It pointed to a February 2024 precedent: Merrill hired another JPMorgan banker in Los Angeles who managed around $9 billion. "Around $9 billion" is that earlier hire, not this one. For Laidlaw, the sourced asset figure is $2.2 billion, and the sourced production figure is $4.1 million. AdvisorHub did not publish a client count, a loan-versus-investment split, or any indication of who had agreed to follow.

That gap is the career point. A private banker's asset number often includes balances, credit, and deposits that sit on the bank's platform. Those balances can make a practice look like a wirehouse team of similar revenue and still move on a different timetable. Advisors sorting an offer like this one can use Intersection Advisory's career strategy work to separate assets overseen from assets that can actually change firms. Production of $4.1 million is the cleaner signal of what the seat was worth where it sat. It is not proof of what arrives in San Francisco.

Bank of America's Merrill unit managed $3.9 trillion in client balances at the end of 2025, AdvisorHub reported, and the firm does not disclose a traditional broker headcount. J.P. Morgan Private Bank manages more than $1.4 trillion and has over 4,000 advisors globally, according to the earnings figures AdvisorHub cited. Neither firmwide total is this banker's book. Until someone reports what transferred, the useful reading is narrower: Merrill confirmed the person and the desk. The $2.2 billion is the book he was managing at J.P. Morgan, as AdvisorHub stated it, not a count of assets already on Merrill's platform.

AdvisorHub also put the hire in Merrill's private-wealth structure. The unit serves customers with at least $10 million to invest. In July, before this story, Merrill consolidated six private-wealth regions into four. Laidlaw joined the private wealth unit on the Monday before the April 8 story, which places the start on April 6, 2026. The article does not say whether he is sitting out a garden leave, whether JPMorgan's employment contract restricts solicitation, or what share of the $2.2 billion is investments versus credit and deposits. Those omissions are the difference between a confirmed hire and a transferred book. Merrill's confirmation covers the advisor, the market, and the manager. It does not cover the assets.