By Liana B. Baker
May 11 (Reuters) - Barclays Plc has hired MarkGarcia, a semiconductor specialist from Bank of America,in a move to help build out its team in one of the most activesectors of technology banking.
Garcia, a managing director, starts Monday in Barclays'Menlo Park, California office. He was at Bank of America fornine years.
The source did not want to speak on the record because thematter is not public yet. A Barclays spokesman declined tocomment.
Most recently, Garcia helped advise a group of Chineseinvestors who took OmniVision Technologies Inc, a maker ofchips for smartphone and tablet cameras, private for about $1.9billion in cash.
He also advised German chipmaker Infineon Technologies which agreed to buy California-based InternationalRectifier last August for about $3 billion in cash.
Earlier in his career, he worked on the sale ofGlobalFoundries to Mubadala Group.
Barclays already has a strong practice in semiconductors,which is one of the busiest areas in technology dealmakinglately. It represented Silicon Image earlier this year on itssale to Lattice Semiconductor Corp.
It also has a track record working with Avago TechnologiesLimited, representing the company on its acquisition ofEmulex Corp this year and larger deals such as Avago's $6.6billion acquisition of LSI in 2014.
The tech, media and telecom group at Barclays has beenundergoing changes in recent months. In March it said it hadbrought on former Blackstone Group LP advisory banker PeterCohen as its global head of media banking. It also lost a seniorsoftware banker, George Patterson, in April. (Reporting by Liana B. Baker; Editing by Alan Crosby)