The cuts are in addition to headcount reductions disclosed earlier this year, Chief Financial Officer Colm Kelleher said today at a conference in New York hosted by Merrill Lynch & Co. Morgan Stanley is recruiting retail banking professionals and will pursue "targeted acquisitions'' among retail banks, Co-President James Gorman said.
The firings announced today equal between 5 percent and 10 percent of Morgan Stanley's 46,383 workers, said a person familiar with the matter, speaking anonymously because the numbers aren't public. The reductions add to the 4,440 people Morgan Stanley has already fired in 2008 and increase to more than 155,000 the number of jobs eliminated by the financial industry worldwide since the middle of last year.
Morgan Stanley and larger rival Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are cutting jobs after opting to convert to deposit-taking banks from securities firms in September, following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Goldman and Citigroup Inc. last week began firing workers as part of plans to cut more than 12,000 jobs.