Morgan Stanley hires a few brokers, sees a few others jump to rival firms. The merry-go-round goes round and round. After Morgan Stanley hired away top brokers from rival firms, Wachovia and UBS have themselves picked off a couple of big-book brokers from Morgan Stanley.

Portland, Ore.-based Terence Brennan, who spent 22 years with Morgan Stanley, made the leap to Wachovia's independent broker-dealer unit early this month. He had around $363 million in client assets on his book, according to Wachovia.

Take that

Denver-based Jeffery Kelly, an 11-year veteran of Morgan Stanley, joined UBS' retail brokerage a few days earlier. A wire report estimates his book at about $100 million.

Top-level brokers can expect to pull about 65% of their books to a new firm, say industry experts -- assuming they're making the move to another big-name shop. That's down from over 80% just a few years ago; the result, say some, of the biggest brokerages' success in "institutionalizing" client relationships.

Anyway, Morgan Stanley hasn't been sitting on its hands while rivals steal its brokers. It pulled in Michael Nutt, a New York-based broker who generated around $1.2 million in commissions and fees over the past year with JPMorgan Chase, according to reports. It also reeled in the New York-based UBS team of Marc Lepselter and Julius Mark.

The moves fit with larger efforts on the part of the national brokerages to increase fee-based revenue, in hopes of lessening their reliance on more market-linked commissions. --FWR

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