More Layoffs Coming at Morgan Stanley, CFO Says

Morgan Stanley CFO Colm Kelleher on Wednesday, November 12, indicated that the onetime investment bank will be cutting more jobs.

Kelleher, who was speaking at a conference sponsored by Merrill Lynch, said Morgan Stanley would reduce headcount in its asset management group by 9 percent. He said that any new cuts would be in addition to the 10 percent reduction in staff the bank made earlier this year.

He added that markets were “incredibly dislocated.”

Meanwhile, the bank’s co-president, James Gorman, said Morgan would be scaling back operations in prime brokerage, proprietary trade, principal investments and commercial real estate origination.

He stated that Morgan planned to reduce headcount by 10 percent across its institutional securities businesses.

“We’re very mindful of the environment that we live in at the moment,” Gorman said, and the bank would “rationalize” headcount and costs accordingly.

Filed by John Goff of Financial Week, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce com.