RBC Wealth Management U.S. has announced the appointment of Michael Armstrong to serve as its chief executive officer.

Armstrong will join RBC from Jefferies & Co., where he was the global head of wealth management. He replaces John Taft, who will retire from RBC on May 31 of this year.

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Armstrong will lead the firm’s 4,700 employees from its headquarters in Minneapolis. He will report to Russell Goldsmith, the chairman and CEO of City National Bank, who was given the additional responsibility of overseeing RBC Wealth Management-U.S. when RBC acquired City National in November 2015.

Armstrong joined Jefferies & Co. in 2014, as its global head of wealth management. Under his leadership, the firm grew its assets under management and its client base, expanded its product and service offerings, and attracted numerous teams of financial advisors.

Before moving to Jefferies & Co., Armstrong held several senior leadership positions at Morgan Stanley, where he worked from 1987 to 2012.

In 2006 and 2007, and then again in 2011 and 2012, he oversaw Morgan Stanley’s wealth management global capital markets business and helped it grow to more than $3bn in gross revenue.

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From 2008 to 2010, he was the global head of the company’s private wealth management division. There he oversaw a team of 2,100 people who served high-net-worth clients in the United States, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East.

Armstrong previously worked in Morgan Stanley’s fixed-income division. During the three years that he was the division’s middle-market sales manager, revenues grew 40 percent and productivity increased 90 percent.

From 1995 to 1998, Armstrong led the equity division’s international prime brokerage unit in London and was responsible for technology, custody and clearing facilities.

Before that, he worked in Hong Kong as the chief operating officer of a regional enterprise that consisted of nine offices in 11 Asian countries.