A four-strong team of former directors within Merrill Lynch’s private client discretionary management team have joined Schroders Private Banking, according to reports.

Rob Rydon, Tim Gibbons, Alex Roe and Graham Harrington resigned from Merrill Lynch just over two weeks ago, as reported by WealthBriefing. At that time details of their next move were unknown.

Schroders Private Banking was not available to confirm whether the team had joined at the time of publication.

The resignations of Messrs Rydon, Gibbons, Roe and Harrington followed the departure of Andrew Clark, latterly head of discretionary at Merrill, for Schroders Private Banking. Mr Clark will join in April as a member of the private banking executive committee and the board of Schroders & Co.

In another move to ramp up its discretionary capability Schroders Private Banking also recently recruited Guy Christie, who formerly managed discretionary private client portfolios at Newton Investment Management. Mr Christie, who also joins in April, will have similar responsibilities in his new role as a senior client director at Schroders and will report to Kate Leppard, team head of relationship management.