Merrill Lynch recruiters

You should still interview and see what they have to offer. Merrill does have a better name than BofA (as far as IBD and S&T), so they might be leveraging the brand name to recruit. (rather than recruiting under BofA)

I'm a prospective, so please take this with a grain of salt.

If they are still recruiting then that might be a positive sign for former SAs that there offer won't be rescinded.

Also BoA wouldn't be recruiting under the Merrill name as the merger isn't finalized since the shareholders of either company have not voted yet.

But the strangest part was how uninformed the recruiter seemed to be about the integration process of the two banks - he told me he had not spoken with anyone from Bank of America recruiting, yet was confident that MER would be hiring. My gut instinct is the plane ticket had been booked months ago, and this recruiter was just going through the motions.

That's so weird. I know someone which a BofA FT interview too

Go for it but I honestly would not be comfortable with it.

BofA is recruiting at my school, so I dont know how that is working out.

i go to a west coast school, i got an interview, but they rescinded, saying no additional hires outside their sa class.

banks visit target schools and go through the interviewing process just to keep up their relationship with those schools. many banks interview with no intention, at all, of hiring. this happened last year with a few banks. this will def. happen much more this year.

Merrill canceled all IBD interviews at my school.

I think you need to put this in context. The financial system is facing a crisis not seen since the Great Depression and John Thain basically saved MER from bankruptcy by doing a BofA deal. This occured at a time when LEH went bankrupt and the modern day equivalent of a bank run on Morgan Stanley and Goldman was only averted by governmental action. The MER-BAC deal was organized in 24 hours - there wasn't, and still hasn't been time to discuss the specifics of the deal amongst even the most senior management at the firm, let alone HR or the relatively low level employees who come to campus. Them not having specifics is perfectly reasonable given the circumstances.

If you want to do banking, especially in this environment, recruit and interview with anyone and everyone you can. Who knows - by the time you actually get interviewed, the bank you orginally thought you'd be interviewing with could be underwater, owned by someone else, or completely transformed in a manner similar to BAC-MER.