Morgan Stanley has suffered its fifth senior departure in two weeks as Vikram Gandhi, co-head of the financial institutions group, quit the troubled bank to join rival Credit Suisse First Boston.

He joins CSFB as global head of the financial institutions group. Gandhi had been with Morgan Stanley since 1989 and advised on a raft of large mergers including last year's $48bn (€37.4bn) sale of Fleet Boston Financial Corporation to Bank of America.