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July 10, 2018 at 02:14 PM
A Morgan Stanley building in New York (Photo: AP)
Morgan Stanley’s Ted Pick was promoted to head the division that houses all of its investment bankers and traders, bolstering his position as a possible successor to Chief Executive Officer James Gorman.
Pick, 49, led Morgan Stanley’s equity-trading business to a No. 1 ranking for the past four years and has been leading a fixed-income turnaround since 2015.
The new role, announced Tuesday in an internal memo, adds oversight of the firm’s dealmakers to his responsibilities. Franck Petitgas, 57 and also considered a CEO candidate, was appointed head of the bank’s international operations as part of the shuffle.
Gorman, 59, has been moving senior executives in an effort to groom his eventual successor, though he’s indicated he plans to stay on several more years. Pick’s success with the equities-trading business makes him a leading candidate.
After being put in charge of the company’s fixed-income unit in 2015, Pick cut about 25 percent of the division’s staff and installed new management. The push started to bear fruit last year as Morgan Stanley posted the smallest drop in revenue from that business on Wall Street.
“Broadening the experience and skill sets of our senior leaders is a critical component of sustaining Morgan Stanley’s future success,” Gorman and President Colm Kelleher said in the memo. The firm previously had named bankers Dan Simkowitz and Jon Pruzan to be head of asset management and chief financial officer, respectively.
Post-Crisis Fix
Pick, who rose up through the capital-markets business during his more than two decades at the firm, took over equities trading after many hedge-fund clients abandoned the firm during the financial crisis.
