(Bloomberg) -- Jefferies Financial Group Inc. has hired veteran health-care banker Philip Ross from JPMorgan Chase & Co., according to people familiar with the matter. 

Ross, who has worked at JPMorgan for more than 25 years, is joining Jefferies as a vice chairman of the firm and global chairman of health-care investment banking, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the details aren’t public. Ross was most recently global chairman for health care in JPMorgan’s investment banking group, according to his LinkedIn profile. He will start at Jefferies after a standard period of leave.

Representatives for Jefferies and JPMorgan declined to comment.

Jefferies under Chief Executive Officer Richard Handler has been hiring aggressively from banks across Wall Street to build a muscular investment banking franchise to compete with rivals including JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley. In 2022, it hired Chris Roop, JPMorgan’s co-head of North America M&A and a prolific health-care dealmaker, to co-lead its America’s M&A investment banking group.

New York-based Jefferies has for years been one of the top underwriters of biotech equity offerings but its advisory business in the sector hadn’t necessarily kept pace. In recent years it has been seeking to win more business advising existing biotech clients on mergers and acquisitions. 

Ross, who has a medical degree, has had a role in some of the biggest biopharmaceutical deals of the past few decades, including advising Celgene Corp. on its $74 billion sale to Bristol Myers Squibb Co. and Acceleron on its $11.5 billion sale to Merck & Co. More recently, he advised AbbVie Inc. on its $10.1 billion purchase of ImmunoGen Inc., which closed this year.

He joined JPMorgan through Hambrecht & Quist, the boutique investment bank that established the renowned JPMorgan health-care conference, and which JPMorgan ultimately acquired. 

Ross’s move comes as dealmakers predict a pick-up in an already steady stream of health-care dealmaking, as large pharmaceutical companies seek deals to diversify their mix of therapies and bolster revenue. Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Wednesday that it agreed to buy Alpine Immune Sciences Inc., a clinical-stage biotech developing a treatment for inflammatory kidney diseases, for about $4.9 billion. 

Jefferies has underwritten 30 biotech equity offerings this year, the most of any firm and also the biggest by total value, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Those include follow-on offerings for Apogee Therapeutics Inc. and Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc., among others.

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