Merrill Lynch has snapped up Christian Dummett, the former head of Abbey National's private equity arm, to lead its London-based private placement team.

Dummett was one of nine to leave the team at Abbey National last summer after the UK retail bank decided to pull the plug on its buy-out operation, blaming a significant fall in profits on losses from private equity and high-yield bonds. Ian Allen, the only member of the team left, is overseeing the realisation of the portfolio on a "selective sale" basis.