Gregory Fleming, former president and chief operating officer of Merrill Lynch, will join Morgan Stanley as president of Morgan Stanley Investment Management in February. He will also oversee merchant banking and global research.

The heads of investment management, merchant banking and global research will report to Fleming, who will also become a member of Morgan Stanley's operating committee. Fleming will report to James Gorman, who will become Morgan Stanley chief executive and president in January.

Fleming, currently a law lecturer and senior research scholar at Yale Law School, played a major role in negotiating Merrill's sale to Bank of America as well as combining Merrill Lynch Investment Management with BlackRock.

"I have long admired Morgan Stanley as a preeminent global franchise, with a terrific brand, deeply rooted partnership culture and strong leadership team," Fleming, 46, said in a press release. "I have enormous respect for James and the caliber of the team he is assembling. I believe Morgan Stanley is well-positioned to thrive, and I am looking forward to joining the firm and doing whatever I can to help my new colleagues build on their current momentum."

Fleming, who also supervised the private equity and real estate investment businesses at Merrill, left the firm in January, after the merger with Bank of America was completed. He joined Merrill in 1992 after serving as a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton. Prior to his appointment as Merrill president and COO in June 2007, Fleming was executive vice president and co-president of Merrill's global markets and investment banking group. Before that, he was COO of global investment banking and co-head of the global financial institutions group.

Fleming, also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a director of Colgate University, received his bachelor's degree in economics from Colgate and his JD from Yale Law School.