(Updates with recent Bank of America team changes, chemical M&A tally from fourth paragraph.)

Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch has hired former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chemicals-and-steel banker Marc-Olivier Regulla, two people with knowledge of the situation said.

Regulla will join Bank of America’s industrial investment banking team as a senior banker next month, said the people who declined to be identified because the move hasn’t been formally announced yet.

During Regulla’s years at Goldman, the U.S. bank oversaw the sale of cosmetics-ingredient maker Cognis to BASF SE for about $3.8 billion as well as the $609 million initial public offering of AZ Electronic Materials SA.

His arrival coincides with Bank of America’s dismissal of 13 investment bankers in its industrials group, including managing directors David Iwan and Egan Antill, two people with direct knowledge of the actions said Sept. 20. Bank of America is ranked second in the U.S. and globally in industrial-firm fees, according to Dealogic, an information and consulting service.

Mergers and acquisitions of industrial companies accounted for about 15 percent of all M&A activity in the last decade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Europe’s debt woes have led to a pause in chemical mergers and acquisitions as chief executives take extra time to decide whether to pursue takeover targets and private equity firms suffer stiffer constraints on fund-raising. By mid-year, chemical makers in Europe alone had accumulated $25 billion in cash after instigating cost cuts during the recession, according to Bloomberg data.

Strategic buyers dominated in the $14 billion of chemical dealmaking in the second quarter, PricewaterhouseCoopers said in an August report. Private equity accounted for only 15 percent.

--With assistance from Hugh Son in New York. Editors: Heather Harris, Benedikt Kammel

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Noel in London at anoel@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Benedikt Kammel at bkammel@bloomberg.net