(Bloomberg) -- Lazard Inc. has hired former Morgan Stanley dealmaker Michele Colocci to spearhead its European health-care expansion.

Colocci will join the US bank on June 3 as a vice chairman of investment banking and managing director in London, Lazard said in a statement on Thursday, confirming a Bloomberg report.

The 60-year-old banker, who retired last year after a career spanning three decades, will help boost Lazard’s health-care franchise, which is led by David Gluckman in New York.

A Harvard Business School graduate, Colocci was previously chairman of mergers and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley, where he also served as global co-head of health-care investment banking.

Colocci began his career as a management consultant at Bain & Co. He quit Morgan Stanley in 2017 to join JPMorgan Chase & Co. as co-head of industry coverage in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as global co-head of health-care investment banking. In 2019, he re-joined Morgan Stanley, where he was M&A chair until he retired last year.  

Among the largest deals that Colocci handled for Morgan Stanley was Shire Plc’s acquisition of Baxalta Inc. for about $32 billion in 2016.

Lazard has worked on this year’s biggest health-care deals, advising Swiss skincare firm Galderma Group AG on its Zurich listing in March that valued the company at more than 15 billion Swiss francs. It also advised the US firm Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. and French drugmaker Sanofi on acquisitions worth nearly $7 billion this year and helped liver drugmaker CymaBay Therapeutics Inc. on its $4.3 billion sale to Gilead Sciences Inc.

Lazard’s Chief Executive Officer Peter Orszag said in a statement that the firm was committed to continuing investing in Europe. The bank’s EMEA business, led by Jean-Louis Girodolle and Cyrus Kapadia, accounted for almost 40% of the firm’s overall financial advisory revenues as of 31 March, according to the statement.

(Updates with Lazard statement, more context.)

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