Gorman to Step Down as Morgan Stanley Chairman at Year-End

By the time he became CEO, the firm was scarred by the financial crisis, which almost put it out of business. Gorman engineered a revival of the investment bank and turbo-charged a money-management operation that now oversees $7 trillion.

Pick, 55, has to convince investors that the company still has a promising growth story ahead of it. While Morgan Stanley shares have advanced 8% this year, the gain is by far the weakest among the biggest U.S. banks.

Investors have been circumspect about the firm’s ability to continue posting strong results in its wealth-management juggernaut, and the investment bank has been ceding ground to arch rival Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Pick has pledged to keep meeting Morgan Stanley’s goals in the wealth business while unlocking additional gains in investment banking.

“I think we are in the early innings of a multiyear M&A cycle,” he said in April on the company’s earnings call. “I’m feeling good about this being early to mid-cycle for the classic investment-banking and capital-markets business around the world.”

Credit: Bloomberg