(Bloomberg) -- Fenchurch Advisory Partners hired two senior dealmakers from Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Canada, expanding what is already one of London’s biggest boutiques in financial services. 

Paul Miller is joining from Morgan Stanley to be a senior managing director and Eric Richard has been hired from RBC as a vice chairman, Fenchurch said in a statement. 

London-based Miller was head of Morgan Stanley’s financial institutions group for the UK and Ireland. Before that he worked for Legal & General Group Plc, where he led the firm’s M&A and strategy group and then oversaw principal investments, and was a managing director at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., according to his LinkedIn profile. 

Richard joins from RBC, where he was a vice chairman in FIG. Previously, he was head of EMEA FIG at Credit Suisse and worked at JPMorgan Chase & Co. 

The pair join the trail of bankers leaving large institutions to join boutiques, which could offer lucrative compensation if deal volumes bounce back from a record low. Still, it’s rare to hire two senior dealmakers who oversaw entire groups at different banks. 

Fenchurch, founded by Malik Karim, has recent mandates in the UK including Numis’s takeover by Deutsche Bank AG, the potential sale of Co-operative Bank, and Lloyds Banking Group Plc’s exploration of options for Scottish Widows annuities. Natixis bought a stake in the firm in 2018.

The firm employs a team of 60 investment bankers who focus on financial institutions. In the last 12 months, Fenchurch has advised on 20 transactions in insurance, banking and asset & wealth management, according to the statement. 

“We have ambitious growth plans especially in North America and we expect to accelerate these by taking advantage of this once in a generation opportunity offered by current market dislocation,” Karim said in the statement.

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