Warburg Dillon Read is bidding to lure Diane Glossman away from Lehman Brothers.
A memo circulated at Warburg on Tuesday said Ms. Glossman, Michael Plodwick, and Robert Patten of Lehman Brothers Inc. would join the firm to cover banking stocks.
But sources said Lehman is making a counter offer for Ms. Glossman, who has been a member of Institutional Investors All America Research Team since 1994.
The memo said Ms. Glossman would head research U.S. multinational banks and e-finance research, Mr. Plodwick would follow superregionals, and Mr. Patten, regional banks. Ken Usdin, also of Lehman, has been hired to help Ms. Glossman cover e-commerce, the memo said.
The top post that Ms. Glossman would fill at Warburg was vacated abruptly in late February by Thomas H. Hanley, who was Ms. Glossman's boss when he was the top bank analyst at Salomon Brothers.
Ms. Glossman and Mr. Plodwick did not return phone calls. Warburg Dillon Read declined to comment.
The equity analysts would be following a team of Lehman investment bankers hired away by Warburg Dillon Read more than two weeks ago. The team of financial institutions specialists included Simon K. Adamiyatt, co-head of mergers and acquisitions for Lehman's financial institutions group, William Wolff 3d, Gregory Smith, Norman Angus, Steven Dykeman, and Matthew Epstein.
Warburg has been trying to bolster its investment banking division since last year. The buildup of its financial institutions team raises speculation that Mr. Hanley was ousted because of a slide in bank stocks and a slowdown in merger activity.
Mr. Hanley became known as "Takeover Tom" in the mid-1990s by distributing lists of bank takeover targets. As many as seven bank analysts who are currently in the banking research division at Warburg could lose their jobs, sources said. They said a specialty finance analyst and a thrift analyst are expected to keep their jobs.
