There are signs that the big wirehouses, led by Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (NYSE: MS), want to poach from each other.

Merrill Lynch has announced it has Daniel Honan, a 24-year brokerage veteran, from Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, where he had worked since the 1980s, eventually managing more than $180 million. He generated more than $1.4 million in revenue the past year, according to Reuters. But Morgan Stanley Smith Barney successfully recruited Brandon Oliver, a veteran of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and Merrill Lynch, and a high-producing team from UBS.

The wirehouse wars are continuing, even as many question the value of wirehouses as an employer. The battle has raged for years. A commentary in Investment News suggests it's not dying out. It likens the wirehouses to the old "communist bloc before the fall of the Berlin Wall." While many see through the KGB tactics of these firms, they stayed because they were comfortable, the commentator says. But that's now changing. We'll no doubt hear more abut this. 

For more:
- here's the Reuters article
- here's the Investment News commentary

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