Morgan Stanley hires JPMorgan's North America M&A head -sources

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Anirban Sen

(Reuters) -Morgan Stanley has hired senior investment banker Marco Caggiano from JPMorgan Chase & Co, where he led the bank's North America mergers and acquisitions (M&A) business, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.

Caggiano, a veteran investment banker who spent 23 years with JPMorgan, will join Morgan Stanley as vice chairman of M&A, the sources said. JPMorgan has not yet named a replacement for Caggiano, the sources said.

The sources requested anonymity because the matter is confidential. JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

Morgan Stanley's global M&A franchise is currently led by John Collins, who previously served as global head of healthcare investment banking at the bank. In the Americas, Morgan Stanley's M&A franchise is led by veteran dealmakers Tom Miles and Brian Healy.

At JPMorgan, Caggiano had worked on several high-profile situations, including advising Twitter Inc on its $44 billion sale to Elon Musk, Take Two on its $12.7 billion acquisition of mobile video game maker Zynga, and toy maker Hasbro Inc on its board fight with hedge fund Alta Fox.

Caggiano trained as a lawyer and worked at Paul Hastings before he joined JPMorgan. He was co-head of North America M&A before Chris Roop, the other co-head, exited JPMorgan last year to join Jefferies Financial Group Inc.

Several top bankers have recently left firms such as Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Barclays to either join direct competitors or smaller peers, amid a global slowdown in dealmaking that has forced top Wall Street banks to trim their investment banking groups and accelerate other cost-cutting moves.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Rhode Island and Anirban Sen in New York; Editing by Greg Roumeliotis and Andrea Ricci)