DeborahFuhr, the former head of ETF research at BlackRock, won’t in the end be joining Bank of America Merrill Lynch to lead its Delta One equity derivatives business due to organizational changes at the bank.

“Due to organisational changes the role of Head of Global Delta 1 Strategy will no longer exist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch,” Bank of America Merrill said in a statement prepared by the bank’s London-based public relations team. “As such it has been mutually agreed that Deborah Fuhr will not join the bank.”

Fuhr’s arrival at Bank of America Merrill had been anticipated since July, when she left her London-based position at BlackRock, the parent of the world’s biggest ETF firm iShares. The Bank of America move raises questions as to whether the company is simply looking to cut costs at a time of great uncertainty in the banking business, or if it is reconsidering its participation in Delta One trading.

Fuhr, responding to an email, referred IndexUniverse to a story published by U.K.-based website Citywire, which included the above statement. She didn’t elaborate in a brief telephone conversation.

The Citywire story said her deputy at BlackRock, Shane Kelly, soon followed her from BlackRock, but noted that Kelly “has joined BoAML.”

The report said that rather than heading up research, Fuhr was going to be working on other aspects of ETF development and trading, as well as other Delta One products.

Delta-one trading involves the trading of products that have a delta of 1 relative to their underlying assets. The connection between security A and security B is direct. It’s arbitrage in the purest sense of the word, as IndexUniverse ETF Analyst Ugo Egbunike wrote in a piece late last summer the last time Delta One trading was in the news in a big way.

That was when UBS ETF trader Kweku Adoboli, a co-director of the investment bank’s Delta One desk in London, lost $2 billion due to fraudulent trades. He was arrested by London police on Sept. 15.

Withering Profitability?

A report about Fuhr’s aborted hiring that was published on the U.K.-based website Financial News suggested that the about-face by Bank of America Merrill was emblematic of cost pressures the bank industry in general is now facing. Financial News partners with Dow Jones in Europe.

Specifically, the Financial News story said a review by European securities regulators of synthetic ETFs has called into question how profitable Delta One trading could be. The review is expected to restrict the use of derivatives in ETF construction, which could crimp Delta One trading profits.

Still, it’s still not clear that Fuhr’s fate means that Bank of America is in fact exiting Delta One trading. Only time will tell if that’s the case.

In a telephone interview, a Bank of America spokesman in London confined his comments to the company’s prepared statement.

“We wish her every success in her future endeavours,” the statement said.