Saying Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) has as clear strategy going forward, CEO James Gorman said it’s powerful to a company to understand why it exists and why it doesn’t.
Talking about where he is taking the company, Gorman says he’s looking for strong growth from the investment banking unit, while building up stability in the company from its wealth management division.
Gorman was cited in a Financial Times article that the major issues at the company were generating revenue and increasing morale; the reason he seemingly is focusing on investment banking and wealth management to address growth and security at the company.
This will put Morgan Stanley on a different path than the majority of their competitors, and when compared against a Goldman Sachs, he doesn’t relate as much, while he looks at their new business model and strategy being closer to how American Express is run.
“We get a lot of folks who say, ‘you don’t or do look like Goldman,’ or ‘you don’t or do look like JPMorgan’,”Gorman said recently. “I don’t really care. Shareholders care about performance. Employees care about whether they’re having interesting, stimulating careers. And the clients care about whether they’re getting well served.”
Another internal focus for Gorman is the trading businesses, which largely underperformed their competitors in 2009, with many expecting Gorman could make some drastic changes in that division, similar to his past way of doing things.
The two major events which caused much of the inner struggles for the company were the economic crisis and changing into a bank holding company, which brought with it a more regulatory atmosphere as well as new challenges.
This is the reason for much of the revamping and new strategy presented by Gorman.
