March 29, 2024

DealBook: Morgan Stanley to Cut 1,600 Jobs

Morgan Stanley plans to eliminate 1,600 jobs by the end of the first quarter of 2012, the firm said on Thursday.

“As we conduct our year-end performance management process and evaluate the right size of the franchise for 2012, we anticipate the elimination of approximately 1,600 positions across the firm globally,” Jeanmarie McFadden, a Morgan Stanley spokeswoman, said in a statement.

The reductions, which amount to about 2.6 percent of Morgan Stanley’s global work force, are expected to come across all job levels in all divisions, including investment banking, trading and support functions, according to a person with knowledge of the plans.

The 17,000 financial advisers in the Morgan Stanley Smith Barney unit are not expected to be affected by the cuts, the person said, though other employees in the unit may be laid off.

It has been a rough year for investment banks, many of which have been shedding thousands of jobs in an attempt to cut costs or stave off losses. In October, the New York State comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, estimated that nearly 10,000 securities industry employees in New York could lose their jobs by the end of 2012.

The cuts are not the year’s first for Morgan Stanley, which announced earlier that it had laid off 300 low-performing financial advisers. The new round of cuts is part of an effort to buttress the bottom line and bolster profitability. In October, James P. Gorman, the chief executive, told analysts that Morgan Stanley intended to pay “those employees who are delivering value.”

Shares of Morgan Stanley rose about 3 percent on Thursday morning on news of the impending layoffs.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d7c56b9fe0dae66f3ae4e767ea06c115