Distressed asset specialist Lin joins Morgan Stanley

Carol Lin will join Morgan Stanley's interest rate, currency and credit (IRCC) division in February as Asia head of the sourcing and distribution platform for loans, distressed and stressed assets.

Most recently, she was a managing director and global bank sourcing coordinator at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York. In her newly created role, Lin will be based in Hong Kong and will report to Ben Falloon, a managing director in the IRCC unit in Hong Kong.

Lin joined Merrill Lynch in 1996 in London. Between 1999 and 2008 she held various roles in loan syndication in New York and she became a managing director in 2005.

With global bank balance sheets shrinking, stressed and distressed products are assuming new importance, says Falloon. "As such, Carol's appointment is significant as we seek to fulfil the needs of our clients and trading books," he says.

However, credit spreads are currently tighter than distressed investors would wish. Lamentation of this state of affairs was a common theme at the AsianInvestor/FinanceAsia Distressed and Troubled Asset Investing Summit held in Tokyo last week.

Lin's appointment follows several other recent fixed-income hires, including Larry Chi as head of IRCC China sales, executive director Bing Feng on the same team, Jason Guo and Xie Rong on the China corporate sales team, and Eric Kuo in Taiwan.

A Morgan Stanley spokesman said that the firm is continuing to expand across all IRCC business areas, particularly on the distribution side.