Swift exit.

Just four years ago, Gerard Klauer Mattison & Co. went on a hiring spree in Los Angeles, snapping up investment bankers, lawyers and partners to beef up its West Coast presence.

But Toronto-based BMO Financial Group, parent of Bank of Montreal, has spent the summer tearing GKM apart. After BMO bought the New York-based brokerage firm in July for $44 million--folding it into what's now called Harris Nesbitt Gerard--it sold two of GKM's four local units to their managers and dissolved two others, doing away with between 25 and 30 employees.

In the past month, GKM Advisors, a money management firm formed in 1999, was sold back to its founders, while GKM Ventures, a $50 million venture capital fund, became independent.

But GKM's local entertainment and media group and some of its investment banking operations have been dissolved. Now several of the entertainment players have found new homes.

Ron Silverman, the entertainment media lawyer who headed Gerard Klauer's L.A. office, now is a managing director at Bel Air Investments Advisors LLC, a money management firm.

David Merritt, brought in to head GKM's entertainment media advisory group, and two senior investment bankers, Larry Lewis and Ronald Hohauser, have joined investment bank Salem Partners, which was founded in 1999.

Merritt, who served for a year as chief financial officer to Michael Ovitz's Artists Management Group, spent the previous 24 years at accounting firm KPMG LLP.

Another member of the entertainment division, Joseph Woolf, now heads the entertainment banking unit of Citibank in Los Angeles.

Several former GKM analysts stayed in the L.A. office to work for Harris Nesbit Gerard, including wireless analyst John Bucher and entertainment industry analyst Jeff Logsdon.