From this outside perspective, with knowledge gained from talking to dozens of folks on the inside of the firm, MSSB is a joint venture in title only: Morgan Stanley is running the show.
We all know that Merrill Lynch and Bank of America were a shotgun marriage. Bernanke and Paulson were holding the proverbial shotgun to Mr. Lewis and Mr. Thain's heads and, poof, we have a humongous financial institution.
Morgan Stanley Smith Barney made an attempt to use the legal system as a bludgeon against a team departing to HighTower while Goldman Sachs did the same with a team departing to Credit Suisse.
The big wirehouses face major challenges that could thwart their announced plans to recruit brokers aggressively and hire more trainees, recruiters and analysts say.
Although the number of brokers who change jobs in 2010 won't approach the level seen during the financial crisis, expect this to be a good year for broker recruiting.
Nearly every Wall Street worker is getting a bonus this year — despite public outrage over banker compensation.
Allianz Global Investors is planning to roll out a series of tools and educational materials over the next year to help its top wirehouse and independent broker-dealer clients train advisers in talking to clients about retirement income.
One of Charles Johnston's top lieutenants at the Morgan Stanley Smith Barney is racing to the door to join Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
A judge has put a Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer on the defensive over a settlement resolving civil charges that accused Bank of America of misleading investors when it acquired Merrill Lynch.
After all of the controversy and consolidation in the wirehouse sector, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC remains the top-rated firm among high-net-worth investors, according to Cogent Research LLC's 2010 Investor Brandscape report, released today.
Three months after he joined the company, Andrew Sieg, head of retirement and philanthropic services at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, has reorganized its retirement services group
After two disastrous years in a row, brokerage industry observers say something akin to normalcy may return this year.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. said Friday it earned $3.28 billion in the last three months of 2009, extending a winning streak for big U.S. banks.
The independent broker-dealer industry took a giant step backward last year, with the largest 25 firms collectively reporting a 10.3% drop in gross revenue.
Right now, defections to other firms aren't that common. But the big Wall Street firms could soon see an exodus of top-level brokers
Large adviser teams at wirehouses control, on average, 80% of their firm's assets, and about a third of the industry's total adviser-managed assets, according to Cerulli Associates Inc.
Provisions in legislation aimed at “too-big-to-fail” financial firms will increase borrowing costs for large institutions — and will make it harder to get secured lending, according to financial industry officials.
The scent of money that drew many professionals to jobs on Wall Street has been dissipating, according to a survey of out-of-work finance folk.
Bank of America is having such a hard time finding a new CEO that some analysts are wondering if Ken Lewis might have to stay past his planned Dec. 31 departure.
Easygoing Charles Johnston does not have the celebrity star power of the executives who run the other brokerage houses on Wall Street.
