Fifth Third Securities expanded its investment banking and mergers and acquisitions capabilities with the hiring of three new executives.

Joseph Carson joined the Investment Banking team as managing director in the Diversified Industrials group based in Cleveland.

Carson brings more than 24 years of experience in investment banking and strategic advisory services for middle market businesses. Carson also brings industrials industry and transaction experience, having executed more than 40 successful M&A and capital markets transactions with a total deal value exceeding $5 billion.

Prior to joining Fifth Third, Carson served as senior vice president and head of the energy division at Caldwell Tanks in Louisville, KY, and served as co-head of the Industrials investment banking vertical at Western Reserve Partners in Cleveland. Additionally, he was part of the investment banking team at KeyBanc Capital Markets in Indianapolis and Cleveland.

Securities also added Michael Ho and Jim Parrino to co-head the Investment Banking group’s buy-side M&A advisory practice. The buy-side service complements the bank’s continued commitment to its existing merger advisory services for the middle market.

Ho joins as managing director and co-head of the group’s buy-side M&A advisory practice. In addition to more than 30 years of M&A execution experience covering a range of transactions from buy-side to sell-side to M&A strategy for large corporate to middle-market clients, Ho combines practitioner expertise with more than 20 years as a professor at the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia.

Parrino is a professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business Administration, a certified public accountant and has more than 30 years of operational, strategic and transactional M&A advisory experience.