Morgan Stanley shutters UK mortgage unit

LONDON (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley (MS.N) has set June 16 as the "lights out" date for its UK residential mortgage arm Advantage, it said on Tuesday, three months after the unit withdrew all mortgage products and announced plans to close.

Morgan Stanley had said in February that it would shut the UK mortgage origination business, which employed 150 people, as part of a wider plan to scale back its home-lending business, which was hit by the global credit crunch.

Advantage was one of a string of specialist units, often backed by investment banks, which piled into the UK non-confirming mortgage market over the past few years on the back of a booming securitization market, but have since been forced to close down.

Merrill Lynch's MER.N Wave and MPLC have also wound up operations, while DB Mortgages, part of Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE), is still in business but with sharply lower volumes.

(Reporting by Clara Ferreira-Marques, editing by Will Waterman)