Morgan Stanley has just made a big FIG hire

Morgan Stanley has made a significant addition to its financial institutions group (FIG) in the U.S., poaching a senior managing director from Guggenheim Partners in New York.

Thomas Chen joined Morgan Stanley earlier this month as a managing director and vice chairman within its FIG group.

As senior investment bankers are increasingly looking to move from large firms into boutique banks, which are grabbing a larger slice of the M&A pie, Chen has gone in the opposite direction.

He joins Morgan Stanley from Guggenheim Partners, where he was a managing director since 2011 and before this worked at Piper Jaffray for nearly six years. However, he also worked at Merrill Lynch as a managing director from 1992 until March 2005.

Chen joins Morgan Stanley at a time when its fortunes in FIG M&A have taken a turn for the worse. At this point in 2015, Morgan Stanley was top of the FIG league tables for announced M&A deals, with $65bn in announced deals and a 41.9% share of the market, according to figures provided by Dealogic.

So far this year, Morgan Stanley sits in eighth place, with $6.5bn in announced deals and a 10% share of the market. J.P. Morgan is number one with 35.5% share of the market, or $23.1bn in announced deals, followed by Goldman Sachs (25.4%) and then Sandler O’Neill & Partners.