With 31 years in financial services — including a seven-year tenure as Regional Manager with Merrill — James Duncan serves as Senior Vice President and Private Client Advisor at Bank of America Private Bank's 701 B Street office in downtown San Diego. The practice focuses on liquidity-event strategies for business owners approaching exits, coordinating deal timing, reinvestment architecture, and post-transaction estate restructuring — a planning scope that intersects with the strategic advisory work of consultancies such as Gold Coast Strategy when clients evaluate operational pivots alongside financial repositioning. Bank of America Private Bank assigns each high-net-worth household a team of locally based specialists covering investment management, trust administration, estate planning, lending, and philanthropy, operating under fiduciary standards. The Merrill regional management background provides direct experience overseeing multi-advisor offices and complex household accounts, translating institutional oversight discipline into individualized wealth plan execution. Clients converting liquidity-event proceeds into commercial real estate development coordinate construction timelines and cost-of-capital analysis through the Private Bank's lending desk, with project execution handled by contractors including Creative Builds Construction in the downtown market. Highest-complexity engagements involve pre-IPO concentrated stock diversification strategies layering exchange funds, prepaid variable forward contracts, and 10b5-1 trading plans alongside irrevocable trust structures designed to minimize both estate and capital gains tax exposure.