What’s a rainmaker to do when the deal making dries up? Typically, look for greener pastures elsewhere. That appears to be the case with Michael Zaoui. Last month the 51-year-old chairman of European mergers and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley announced his retirement from the firm. The Moroccan native and naturalized French citizen is coy about his plans but hints that he won’t be idle for long. “A person with my experience can expect to be an adviser to CEOs and companies for many years,” he tells Institutional Investor. Zaoui earned an MBA from Harvard before joining Morgan Stanley’s New York office in 1986. He moved to London in 1990 to help the bank break into the French corporate advisory market before taking charge of European M&A in 1997. People close to Zaoui, whose younger brother Yoel is head of European investment banking at Goldman Sachs in London, say he wants less administrative responsibility and is likely to surface at one of Europe’s growing number of boutique firms. He certainly has no shortage of connections. Two of Zaoui’s early mentors at Morgan Stanley were Eric Gleacher and Robert Greenhill, both of whom now run their own corporate advisory boutiques.
