Morgan Stanley Said to Hire Guggenheim Finance Banker Chen

(Bloomberg) -- Investment banker Thomas Chen joined Morgan Stanley, where he will specialize in advising on deals involving specialty lenders and banks, according to people familiar with the matter.

Chen recently joined the New York-based bank as managing director and vice chairman of its financial institutions group from Guggenheim Partners, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter isn’t public.

A representative for Morgan Stanley declined to comment. A representative for Guggenheim didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Chen spent more than five years at Guggenheim, where he worked on deals including Nordstrom Inc.’s sale of its credit-card portfolio to Toronto-Dominion Bank and Element Financial Corp.’s purchase of PHH Corp.’s fleet-management services.

Chen joined Piper Jaffray Cos. as co-head of its financial services investment banking group in 2006, after more than two years at Bank of America Securities, according to data from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Before that he worked at Merrill Lynch & Co.

To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Monks in New York at mmonks1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeffrey McCracken at jmccracken3@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Fournier, Devin Banerjee