Morgan Stanley hired a New York-based team of private-wealth advisers from Credit Suisse Group AG who advise on more than $5 billion in assets.
The 13-person team is led by Richard Zinman, Anthony Dertouzos and John Moreno, according to an e-mailed statement from Morgan Stanley. The three advisers previously worked at Smith Barney, which Morgan Stanley later bought, before leaving for Zurich-based Credit Suisse in 2008.
Credit Suisse, which is shuttering its U.S. private-banking business, reached an agreement last month with Wells Fargo & Co., giving the latter more detailed information on advisers and clients and an inside track to hire them. Still, the head of Wells Fargo’s wealth-management business said last week that there’s a “feeding frenzy” for top Credit Suisse advisers and that some other banks are offering higher recruitment bonuses.
Morgan Stanley earned $1.61 billion from wealth management in the first nine months of 2015, up 17 percent from the same period a year earlier. The firm has boosted margins in the business, in part by lending more to individual clients and increasing the amount of customer funds in fee-based accounts.
Morgan Stanley has one of the largest wealth-management businesses, with $1.93 trillion of client assets at the end of September, driven by its purchase of Smith Barney from Citigroup Inc. in the wake of the financial crisis.