Briefly

Merrill Lynch & Co. on Monday named Richard Bernstein to be chief U.S. investment strategist, replacing Christine Callies, who left the firm last week. Bernstein has been the firm’s chief quantitative strategist, focused on tracking earnings and other hard data to arrive at stock recommendations. He will combine that post with his new position as U.S. strategist, which entails making broader market calls and recommending generic asset allocation percentages for the brokerage’s clients.