PROFESSIONAL PROFILE

Thomas Rouse is the Associate Resident Director of the Greenville, NC office. Thomas works with individual clients to develop customized financial strategies to help them achieve their long-term financial goals such as a comfortable retirement, developing the financial resources for their children and grandchildren's educational goals, investment portfolio management, and liability management including mortgages and equity lines. Thomas also helps clients focus on estate planning issues by working with their existing advisors, accountants, and attorneys to develop comprehensive estate plans so that clients leave a lasting legacy for their families and their philanthropic passions. His primary goal is to listen and learn each client's unique situation, and to then develop, and implement a customized solution to achieve those goals.

Thomas also works with businesses and non-profit groups to provide cash management and investment advice as well as designing and implementing retirement plans for those entities. Thomas uses the full breadth and depth of Merrill Lynch's resources to help business owners and professional partnerships who may be in the process of selling their businesses to achieve the best net results from that transaction by coordinating the resources and expertise of our trust, investment banking, and private banking groups.

Prior to joing Merrill Lynch in 2004, Thomas was a financial advisor with The Financial Group from 2000-2004 in Raleigh, NC. He is a graduate with a degree in economics and international studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is a member of the Greenville Noon Rotary Club. He lives with his wife and two sons in Greenville.