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Morgan Stanley

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Morgan Stanley is one of the world's largest investment banks and global financial services firms, which serves a diversified group of corporations, governments, financial institutions, and individuals. Morgan Stanley's world headquarters is in New York City, with regional headquarters in London and Hong Kong.

Overview

Morgan Stanley is a global financial services firm that, through its subsidiaries and affiliates, provides its products and services to customers, including corporations, governments, financial institutions and individuals. The Company operates in three business segments: Institutional Securities, Global Wealth Management Group, and Asset Management.

  • Institutional Securities includes capital raising; financial advisory services, including advice on mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, real estate and project finance; corporate lending; sales, trading, financing and market-making activities in equity securities and related products and fixed income securities and related products, including foreign exchange and commodities; benchmark indices and risk management analytics; research; and investment activities.

  • Global Wealth Management Group provides brokerage and investment advisory services; financial and wealth planning services; annuity and insurance products; credit and other lending products; banking and cash management services; retirement services, and trust and fiduciary services. Global Wealth Management Group serves individual investors and small-to-medium size businesses and institutions with an emphasis on high-net-worth investors. It provides clients with an array of financial solutions comprising Morgan Stanley's products and services, as well as products and services from third-party providers, such as insurance companies and mutual fund families.

  • Asset Management provides global asset management products and services in equity, fixed income, alternative investments and private equity to institutional and retail clients through third-party retail distribution channels, intermediaries and Morgan Stanley's institutional distribution channel. Morgan Stanley's asset management activities are principally conducted under the Morgan Stanley and Van Kampen brands. It provides asset management products and services to institutional investors worldwide, including pension plans, corporations, private funds, non-profit organizations, foundations, endowments, governmental agencies, insurance companies and banks.

Morgan Stanley is a world leader in financial services, offering a wide variety of products and services. A partial list of these products and services includes:

History: mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures

Morgan Stanley was founded in New York on September 51935, by Henry S. Morgan, and Harold Stanley of J. P. Morgan & Co. along with others from JP Morgan & Co. This split of the commercial and investment banks came as a result of the Glass-Steagall Act. Within its first year it achieved 24% of market share among public offerings. In 1964, Morgan Stanley created the first viable computer model for financial analysis. By 1971, the Mergers & Acquisitions business was established along with Sales & Trading. In 1986, Morgan Stanley Group, Inc., became publicly listed.

In 1996, Morgan Stanley acquired Van Kampen American Capital.

On February 51997, the company merged with Dean Witter Reynolds, and Discover & Co. the spun-off financial services business of Sears Roebuck. The merged company was briefly known as "Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Discover & Co." until 1998 when it was known as "Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co." until late 2001. To foster brand recognition and marketing the Dean Witter name was dropped and the firm became "Morgan Stanley".

On December 192006, after reporting 4th quarter earnings, Morgan Stanley announced the spinoff of its Discover Card unit.

On December 192007, Morgan Stanley announced that it would receive a US$5 billion capital infusion from the China Investment Corporation in exchange for securities that would be convertible to 9.9% of its shares in 2010.

Organization

Morgan Stanley comprises four main business units:

  • Institutional Securities
  • Global Wealth Management Group
  • Investment Management
  • Credit Services

Diversity and culture

  • Morgan Stanley was named one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers in 2004 by Working Mothers magazine.
  • Family Digest magazine named Morgan Stanley one of the "Best Companies for African Americans" in June 2004
  • Essence magazine named Morgan Stanley as one of the "30 Great Places to Work" in May 2004
  • Asian Enterprise magazine named Morgan Stanley as one of the "Top Companies for Asian Americans" in April 2004
  • Hispanic magazine selected Morgan Stanley as one of the "100 Companies Providing the Most Opportunities to Hispanics" in February 2004
  • Morgan Stanley is listed in The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers, only recently dropping out of the top 40
  • The Times listed Morgan Stanley 5th in its 20 Best Big Companies to Work For 2006 list
  • Great Place to Work Institute Japan in 2007 ranked Morgan Stanley as the second best corporation to work in Japan, based on the opinions of the employees and the corporate culture
  • Morgan Stanley has a strong commitment to equal rights for gay, bisexual and transgendered people - recently demonstrated by sponsoring the Mayor's Reception at London's EuroPride 2006 Festival

In 2003, Morgan Stanley agreed to pay billions of dollars in order to settle its portion of various legal actions and investigations brought by Eliott Spitzer, the Attorney General of New York, the National Association of Securities Dealers (Now FINRA), the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, (SEC) and a number of state securities regulators, relating to fraud that was allegedly perpetrated upon retail investors by a dozen of the largest investment banking securities brokerage firms.

On July 122004, Morgan Stanley settled a sex discrimination suit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for $54 million.

On January 122005, The New York Stock Exchange imposed a $19 million fine on Morgan Stanley for alleged regulatory and supervisory lapses.

On May 162005, A Florida jury found that Morgan Stanley did in fact fail to give adequate information to Ronald Perelman about Sunbeam thereby defrauding him and causing damages to him of $604 million. To that $604 million was added punitive damages by the jury for a total of compensatory and punitive damages of $1.450 billion. This verdict was directed by the judge as a sanction against Morgan Stanley after the firm's attorneys infuriated the court by failing and refusing to produce documents, and falsely telling the court that certain documents did not exist. On March 212007, the ruling was overturned and Morgan Stanley was no longer required to pay the 1.57 billion dollar verdict. .

More recently, a class action lawsuit was filed in California by both current and former Morgan Stanley employees for unfair labor practices that were instituted to those employed through the financial advisor training program. A $40 million settlement was reportedly reached, with expected payout to those employed through the training program between specified dates.

FINRA fine for e-mails

On September 27, 2007, FINRA announced a $12.5 million settlement with Morgan Stanley to resolve charges that the firm's former affiliate, Morgan Stanley DW, Inc. (MSDW), failed on numerous occasions to provide e-mails to claimants in arbitration proceedings as well as to regulators - while representing that the destruction of the firm's email servers in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center resulted in the loss of all pre-9/11 e-mail. In fact, the firm had millions of pre-9/11 e-mails that had been restored to the firm's active e-mail system using back-up tapes that had been stored in another location. Customers who had lost their arbitration cases against Morgan Stanley DW Inc. because of their inability to obtain the emails to demonstrate Morgan Stanley's misconduct will each receive a token amount of money as a result of the settlement.

Awards

2007

  • Financial Times' International Prime Brokerage House of the Year 2005, 2006 and 2007
  • Euromoney Best Prime Brokerage House 2007
  • BusinessWeek #1 Prime Brokerage House 2006 and 2007
  • Euromoney's Global Investment Bank of the Year
  • Financial Times Number 3 Best Place to Work in the UK
  • Newsweek Most Prestigious Global Investment Bank of the Year 2007
  • Best Investment Bank – Spain
  • Best Investment Bank – Luxemburg
  • Best Investment Bank – Taiwan
  • Best M&A House – UK
  • Best M&A House – Denmark
  • Best M&A House – Nordic and Baltic region
  • Best M&A House – Singapore
  • Best M&A House – Hong Kong
  • Best Debt House – China
  • Best Debt House – Singapore
  • Best Debt House – Colombia
  • Best Project Finance House in Latin America

Information found at Euromoney

Notable current and former employees

Business

Politics and public service

Other

Works about Morgan Stanley

See also

References

External links



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Last updated on Friday March 14, 2008 at 02:00:43 PDT (GMT -0700)
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