Morgan Stanley's Asia head of M&A to join Barclays

Morgan Stanley's head of mergers and acquisitions for Asia-Pacific, Ed King, has resigned and, according to sources, will be joining Barclays Capital in a similar role.

While King has yet to formally leave the firm, Morgan Stanley has already named his replacements. A spokesperson at the bank said Samuel Kim and Peter Ding will become co-heads of M&A for Asia-Pacific. Like with King, their remit won't include Japan.

In addition, the firm has also set up a new corporate finance execution team for the region, which will be headed by Terence Keyes. The idea of the new team, which will be responsible for executing all financing-related transactions, is to better meet the increasingly specialised needs of the clients and to bring greater focus to the bank's financing and M&A platforms, the spokesperson said.

King is a veteran Morgan Stanley banker with a Greater China background, who has run M&A in the region since May 2005 when he was appointed co-head of the division together with Rohit Sipahimalani. The latter has since left to join Temasek.

At Barclays, King will join his former Morgan Stanley boss Matthew Ginsburg, who moved to the UK bank to become head of investment banking for Asia-Pacific about nine months ago. Since then, he has made several significant hires to build up the investment banking and equity capital markets franchise, which is something the bank started to focus on only a couple of years ago. Ginsburg was head of investment banking at Morgan Stanley as well.

It is still unclear exactly what position King will have at Barclays and how his hire will affect Jason Rynbeck, who is head of advisory for Asia-Pacific. Rynbeck was poached from ABN AMRO along with a team of senior bankers in May 2008 to kick-start the M&A business at Barclays.

A spokesman at Barclays declined to confirm or comment on the hire.

Kim, one of the new co-heads of M&A for the region, has been with Morgan Stanley for more than 11 years, working in the M&A divisions in both Asia and the US. He was previously head of Korea M&A, but most recently served as chief operating officer for Asia-Pacific investment banking, a position that is rotated among the firm's senior investment bankers on an annual basis. 

Replacing Kim as COO will be Elizabeth Wang, who is a managing director in the M&A department.

Ding, the other co-head of M&A, is a more recent addition to the firm, having joined Morgan Stanley in 2008 from UBS. He is currently a managing director in the M&A department.

Meanwhile, Keyes has been with Morgan Stanley since 1997, apart from a brief stint (less than one year) as head of Asia corporate finance execution at Merrill Lynch in 2008-09. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley in 1997 he headed up the Asia advisory group at SBC Warburg in Hong Kong. He moved to Hong Kong with Warburg in 1994.

Keyes was re-hired by Morgan Stanley in late June last year for an execution-focused role. When he left for Merrill he was a managing director in the Asia-Pacific investment banking division, with a particular focus on M&A. He is a member of the Hong Kong stock exchange listing committee.