This work presents a new design of a composite model-reference adaptive control (MRAC) with a least-squares parameter estimator. The objective of the design is to preserve the remarkable transient adaptation characteristic obtained by a modified MRAC algorithm recently introduced and, at the same time, enjoy the superior parameter convergence performance of a least-squares estimator. The algorithm employs two different estimators for the same controller parameter, one updated by a gradient law driven by the tracking error and the other updated by a least-squares algorithm driven by a prediction error. In this way, the performance of each one is kept unchanged. The existence of a Lyapunov function assures the global uniform stability of the proposed composite adaptive scheme and simulation results confirm and illustrate its properties.