By Milana Vinn

May 27 - Jefferies has lured away four of Guggenheim Partners' senior-most technology bankers on the West Coast, an unusually large hiring spree as the boutique investment bank builds up its tech practice, according to people familiar with the matter.

Guggenheim's senior managing director Robert Bartlett and managing directors Jalil Musayev, Nash Abu-Zahra, and Gaurav Thakur will join Jefferies in a few months, one of the people said, asking not to be named because the hires have not been publicly announced. Jefferies is poaching veterans from Guggenheim’s core team investment banking team focused on tech deals on the West Coast, the person said.

The team will report to Jefferies’ global co-heads of technology investment banking Jason Greenberg and Cameron Lester, they said. They will continue to be based in the Bay Area.

Representatives for Jefferies and Guggenheim Partners declined to comment.

Bartlett and his team have worked at Guggenheim’s Menlo Park office for the past several years.

Bartlett joined Guggenheim in 2021 from Goldman Sachs as a key addition tasked in helping the boutique investment bank expand its cybersecurity client base. Before Guggenheim, Bartlett spent three years as head of security and infrastructure software investment banking at Goldman Sachs.

Thakur and Musayev both joined Guggenheim a few months after Bartlett, in April 2021, from Bank of America, while Abu-Zahra came onboard in September 2022 from Goldman Sachs.

Jefferies has been building out its technology investment banking team over the past few years with several key hires from bulge bracket banks, including the addition of Rob Eliasek, a chairman of software investment banking from Bank of America, and Stefani Silverstein, a managing director covering software and internet from Goldman Sachs.

(Reporting by Milana Vinn in New York; Editing by Stephen Coates)

((Contact Milana Vinn at milana.vinn@tr.com))