Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley is a U.S.-based financial services firm headquartered in New York. Through subsidiaries, it provides investment banking, securities trading and underwriting, wealth management, investment management and banking services to institutions and individuals. Founded in 1935, it operates through three principal business segments and is supervised as a U.S. global systemically important banking organization. ^[1][2][3]

Origins and development

Morgan Stanley opened for business on September 16, 1935, after the Banking Act of 1933 separated important commercial-banking and securities activities. Harold Stanley and Henry S. Morgan were among its founders. The firm began as an investment bank focused on raising capital for issuers, rather than as a conventional deposit-taking bank. It later expanded into sales and trading, research, mergers and acquisitions, services for individual investors and international markets. ^[2]

The firm went public in 1986 and merged with Dean Witter in 1997. The merger brought together an institutional investment-banking franchise and a substantial business serving individual investors. During the 2008 financial crisis, Morgan Stanley converted to a bank holding company, bringing its parent company within the Federal Reserve System’s supervisory framework for bank holding companies. These changes help explain why the present-day group combines capital-markets operations with regulated banking subsidiaries and a large wealth-management business. ^[1][2]

A further expansion in wealth management began with the 2009 joint venture combining Morgan Stanley’s wealth-management platform with businesses contributed by Citigroup, including Smith Barney’s U.S. operations. Morgan Stanley subsequently increased its ownership of the venture. It completed its acquisition of E*TRADE in 2020, adding a self-directed brokerage and workplace equity-administration business, and closed its acquisition of Eaton Vance in 2021, expanding its investment-management activities. The acquisitions changed the mix of services offered across the group; they did not make client assets held or managed for customers equivalent to assets owned by Morgan Stanley. ^[2][4][5][6]

Business organization

Morgan Stanley reports three principal segments: Institutional Securities, Wealth Management and Investment Management. The segments distinguish the activities for which the firm reports revenue and results, although clients may use services from more than one part of the group. A company, for example, may obtain advice on a securities issuance while its employees use workplace share-plan services and its retirement plan invests in separately managed assets. The segments therefore describe the reporting structure, not three legally separate companies. ^[1][8]

**Institutional Securities** encompasses investment banking and capital-markets activities. Investment bankers advise on transactions and help issuers raise capital; trading businesses facilitate transactions in equities and fixed-income products. The segment also includes activities that expose the firm to counterparties, securities prices and financing markets. Morgan Stanley’s third-quarter 2026 earnings release reported $10.0 billion of Institutional Securities net revenue, including $2.2 billion from investment banking, $5.8 billion from equity activities and $2.0 billion from fixed income. These figures describe one quarter’s results, not a fixed distribution of the segment’s income. ^[1][8]

**Wealth Management** serves individuals and workplace-plan participants through adviser-led and self-directed channels. Its activities include brokerage, investment advisory services, financial planning, custody and cash-management services, as well as lending conducted through relevant group entities. The E*TRADE acquisition broadened the self-directed and workplace channels alongside Morgan Stanley’s financial-adviser network. In the third quarter of 2026, the segment reported $9.1 billion in net revenue, $232.4 billion in net new assets and $3.2 trillion in fee-based client assets. Net new assets measure a period’s inflows less outflows under the firm’s reporting definitions; they are not the same as revenue or profit. ^[4][8][9]

**Investment Management** manages investments for institutional and individual clients through strategies and vehicles that can include separately managed accounts and funds. The Eaton Vance acquisition enlarged this part of the group. At September 30, 2026, Morgan Stanley reported approximately $2.0 trillion in investment-management assets under management and $1.5 billion in quarterly net revenue for the segment. Assets under management are client assets managed under investment mandates, whereas the firm’s consolidated balance-sheet assets represent resources reported by Morgan Stanley itself. The two measures answer different questions about its scale. ^[5][8]

Banking, funding and client assets

Morgan Stanley is a parent company with operating subsidiaries, rather than a single bank offering every service directly. Its U.S. insured banking subsidiaries include Morgan Stanley Bank, N.A., and Morgan Stanley Private Bank, National Association. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation lists both as insured national banks and identifies the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as their primary federal regulator. Deposit-taking and lending at those banks must be distinguished from brokerage, advisory and asset-management services elsewhere in the group. ^[1][10][11]

Client-asset figures require particular care. At September 30, 2026, Morgan Stanley reported $10.5 trillion in total client assets across Wealth and Investment Management. That measure conveys the scale of assets associated with its client businesses; it does not mean the company owned $10.5 trillion of investments or could use those assets to meet its own obligations. Likewise, fee-based client assets and investment-management assets under management describe different populations of assets. Their labels, measurement dates and definitions matter when comparing them with one another or with figures reported by another institution. ^[8][9]

The distinction also affects how different activities generate revenue. A wealth-management account may produce advisory or transaction-related revenue; an investment-management mandate may generate management fees; lending may generate interest income; and securities activities may produce underwriting, advisory or trading revenue. These income streams respond differently to client activity, market prices, interest rates and credit conditions. Morgan Stanley’s reported results consequently reflect more than movements in the value of assets held for clients. ^[1][8][9]

Financial reporting and risks

Morgan Stanley’s common stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MS. As a public company, it publishes annual reports and other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Its annual Form 10-K provides consolidated financial statements and discussion of its operations and risks; quarterly results provide more recent, but shorter-period, information. As of November 2026, its 2025 Form 10-K was the latest completed annual report, while the results for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, provided a more recent operating snapshot. ^[1][8][12]

For full-year 2025, Morgan Stanley reported approximately $70.6 billion in net revenue and $16.9 billion in net income applicable to Morgan Stanley. For the third quarter of 2026, it reported $20.3 billion in net revenue and $4.9 billion in net income applicable to the company. Annual and quarterly amounts should not be compared as though they covered equal periods. The third-quarter release also reported a standardized Common Equity Tier 1 capital ratio of 14.9%, a regulatory capital measure that is distinct from reported earnings or assets held for clients. ^[8][13]

The firm faces risks associated with securities prices, interest rates, borrowers and trading counterparties, funding and liquidity, operations and legal or regulatory requirements. The relevance of each risk varies across its businesses: a lending loss differs from a fall in assets on which management fees are charged, and both differ from losses on positions held for trading. Its annual filing and public resolution plan describe these activities and the group’s legal and financial structure. A resolution plan addresses how authorities and the firm would seek to manage a severe failure scenario; filing one is not a prediction that failure will occur. ^[1][14]

Oversight and systemic importance

The Federal Reserve includes Morgan Stanley among the U.S. global systemically important banks, or G-SIBs. The designation subjects the group to heightened requirements relative to smaller banking organizations. Oversight occurs at different levels: the Federal Reserve supervises the banking organization; the OCC is the primary federal regulator of its two named national-bank subsidiaries; and securities and investment-management activities are subject to applicable securities regulation. Being both a securities firm and a bank holding company is central to its regulatory position. ^{[3][10][11][14]}

Morgan Stanley’s 2025 public resolution plan describes a strategy intended to address distress across a complex group with institutional securities, wealth-management and investment-management businesses. That structure matters because a large financial firm may have obligations to depositors, investors, borrowers, trading counterparties and clients whose assets it services or manages. The plan discusses legal entities and operational continuity rather than treating the Morgan Stanley name as if it referred to one undivided operating bank. ^[14]

Leadership and significance

Ted Pick became chief executive officer in January 2024 and chairman in January 2025. Leadership and quarterly results are time-specific facts, while the firm’s broader significance lies in the combination of underwriting and trading, financial advice, investment management and regulated banking within one corporate group. Morgan Stanley illustrates how a U.S. financial institution can serve both capital-markets participants and individual investors while reporting client assets, company-owned assets and regulatory capital as separate measures. ^[1][7][8]