Two more top bankers go from Morgan Stanley

Two more senior investment bankers have left Morgan Stanley in New York. Jane Wheeler is joining Evercore Partners, an advisory boutique, and James McGinnis is joining AIG Financial Products, the investment banking arm of US insurer American International Group.

Their departures bring the number of senior departures at the US investment bank to at least 16 in the four months since a group of dissident shareholders started a campaign to oust Philip Purcell, chairman and chief executive, who resigned last month.

Wheeler was managing director and head of the bank's securities industry and financial technology investment banking business. She advised the private equity consortium which bought SunGard, the US technology firm, for $11.3bn (€9.3bn) in March.

She will be a senior managing director at Evercore, which has won a role as co-adviser to media group VNU on its $7bn acquisition of IMS Health, the data provider.

McGinnis was a managing director in Morgan Stanley's energy and utilities group and left the bank last month. He is joining AIG Financial Products as a managing director of in its energy banking team.

Other senior losses include Jospeh Perella, chairman of institutional securities, Vikram Pandit, president and chief operating officer of institutional securities, and Raymond McGuire, co-head of mergers and acquisitions. Stephen Crawford, co-president, quit on Monday with a $32m (€26m) cash pay-out.

Separately, John Mack, former president and chief executive at Morgan Stanley, who the bank re-hired two weeks ago to replace Purcell, is visiting Morgan Stanley bankers in London today.

A spokesman for the bank confirmed Mack was in London to meet European staff but declined to give further details.

Last week Mack, who re-joined Morgan Stanley on a guaranteed $25m per year package tied to the average salaries of four of his Wall Street counterparts, wrote to staff saying he was amending his contract to remove the guarantee.

Sources close to the bank said Mack wrote in an internal memo that he would accept whatever payment the board thinks he is entitled to based on the bank's performance.