New Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) chief executive officer James Gorman has been consistently working on putting his own team in place since his installment on January 1, and that continues as chief legal officer Gary Lynch announced he’ll be leaving that position in the company.
In an internal memo, it said that Lynch will stay in that position until a new chief legal officer is found to replace him.
It’s unclear at this time whether this is something Gorman preferred in order to build his top team as he wanted it, or it was a more practical issue with Lynch wanting to stay in London where he is now based, while Gorman may have wanted him to move to New York where whoever replaces Lynch will be based in the new position.
Even though Lynch is leaving the position of chief legal officer, he isn’t leaving the company, implying there may have been an internal issue which wasn’t necessarily related to something negative, but rather personal desires on where he wanted to work, or again, Gorman wanting his own person in the position.
Lynch will continue to work in the London office as a vice chairman with a continued focus on global regulation, while also management. When he moved to the London office last year Lynch was placed in the vice chairman position while continuing on a chief legal officer.
The other major team members promoted since Gorman was given the CEO job have been Gregory Fleming, who is now the chief operations officer of the company and Ruth Porat, who is the chief financial officer of Morgan Stanley.
