Morgan Stanley Private Equity and William Mitchell, former chief executive and chairman of Arrow Electronics, will work together in a collaboration that will buy or invest in a number of managed IT service firms.

Morgan Stanley PE’s Jim Howland, an operating partner and managing director, will work with Mitchell to begin to identify potential buyout opportunities.

Mitchell retired from Arrow earlier this year; he spent seven years with the company and during his tenure Arrow Electronics bought and integrated 17 companies into its platform.

Morgan Stanley built its private equity group with a slew of hires from 2007 and 2008 where it poached seasoned executives from Apollo Advisors and The Carlyle Group, among others.

Calls seeking comment were not acknowledged by press time.

Lately, deals in the IT space have been increasingly emerging, with private equity firms looking to capitalize by building on scale.

Apax Partners bought Sophos, the IT and data security firm, for $830 million, it was announced earlier this month. Stepstone ASA sold is Stepstone Solutions to European PE firm HgCapital prior to that and Harbour Group, the St. Louis private equity firm, bought Fleetgistics Holdings as well.

In the healthcare-IT space, Hyland Software, an enterprise content management software vendor, acquired eWebHealth in March; Hyland is run by private equity firm Thoma Bravo.

Technology