(Bloomberg) -- Barclays Plc, seeking to capitalize on the lucrative fees that come with private equity firms selling their assets, has hired Martin Douglass from Morgan Stanley to lead its financial sponsors mergers and acquisitions business.

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Douglass is joining London-based Barclays in New York and will report to Dan Grabos, head of Americas M&A. He’ll work closely with JF Astier, the bank’s global head of the financial sponsors group, and Christian Oberle, its head of the sponsors group in the Americas, according to a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News.

A representative for Barclays confirmed the contents of the memo. A spokesperson for Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

At Morgan Stanley, which he joined in 2014, Douglass was most recently a managing director on the M&A team in New York. He previously worked on the health-care investment banking team at Jefferies Financial Group Inc.

Douglass will work with the financial sponsors group, M&A advisory and broader industry coverage teams to help bring in new business from private equity firms. Lately, those firms have been showing signs of confidence in dealmaking ahead of a potential interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve in September.

During his career, Douglass has worked on deals including the $8.5 billion sale of Hollywood studio MGM to Amazon.com Inc. and the merger of Baker Hughes Co. and General Electric Co.’s oil and gas business. He also played a key role in the merger of Vantiv Inc. and Worldpay Inc. and the subsequent sale of the combined company to Fidelity National Information Services Inc., according to the memo.

Barclays has been on a hiring spree since the beginning of the year, installing 19 new managing directors and directors globally across its investment banking business.

The value of acquisitions by buyout firms has topped $100 billion during July and August, Bloomberg-compiled data show — meaning it could yet be the third-highest tally for these two months in a decade.

(Adds data point in final paragraph. An earlier version of this story corrected Douglass’s reporting line.)

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