Barclays hires McDavid as equities head from Morgan Stanley

LONDON, May 23 (Reuters) - Barclays has appointed a Morgan Stanley veteran Scott McDavid as its new global head of equities, the British bank said on Tuesday, the latest in a series of high-profile hires at its investment bank in New York.

The bank also said it had appointed Ronnie Wexler as global head of equities distribution.

McDavid will join Barclays in September and report to Adeel Khan, co-head of Global Markets. He worked at Morgan Stanley for almost two decades and was most recently co-head of equities trading for the Americas.

Wexler joins in June and will report to Stephen Dainton, the bank's other Global Markets chief.

The appointments follow a string of management changes at the top of Barclays' investment bank earlier this year, as Chief Executive C.S. Venkatakrishnan seeks to break Wall Street rivals' hold on the top five global rankings.

"We believe we are the only bank that can truly challenge the U.S. banks to be top five in markets," Dainton told Reuters.

McDavid and Wexler's task "will be to accelerate the growth of our equities business" to crack those top five ranks, Dainton said. "That will be their mission."

Dainton had been holding the interim head of equities role pending the announcement on Tuesday, after the previous co-heads of equities, Todd Sandoz and Paul Leech, left in February.

The bank at that time said it would seek a sole head of the business as opposed to co-heads.

Barclays' investment bank has performed strongly in the past few years as it capitalised on frenzied client trading amid volatile markets caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

But recent results have been more mixed, as high interest rates and inflation sapped corporate bosses appetite for dealmaking. (Reporting By Sinead Cruise and Lawrence White in London and Lananh Nguyen in New York, editing by Iain Withers, Jane Merriman and Nick Zieminski)