Barclays Capital has hired two of the UK’s most coveted bankers to run its European M&A business, edging the UK bank one step closer to its ambition of becoming a leading full-service global investment bank.

Mark Warham, the chairman of UK investment banking and head of UK M&A at Morgan Stanley, and former director general of the UK's Takeover Panel, and Matthew Ponsonby, the global co-head of infrastructure investment banking at Citigroup, have been named co-heads of European M&A at BarCap.