MS Morgan Stanley

By Liz Hoffman 

Morgan Stanley offered more clues into its slow-burning succession race, elevating a top trading executive seen as a favorite to eventually replace Chief Executive James Gorman.

Ted Pick, Morgan Stanley's trading chief, will add oversight of investment banking, a move that puts him in charge of half of the firm's revenue and cements his frontrunner status.

Morgan Stanley is also promoting Franck Petitgas, a longtime investment banker, to run all of the firm's international business. Both men will report to Morgan Stanley's No. 2 executive, Colm Kelleher, according to a memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, Susie Huang will fill Mr. Petitgas' seat as co-head of investment banking, alongside Mark Eichorn. A Morgan Stanley lifer who currently runs its Americas M&A business, she will be the first woman to run investment-banking at a top U.S. firm.

The moves offer the latest window into Morgan Stanley's succession planning. Mr. Gorman, who turns 60 this week, is likely to stay on another three to five years as his turnaround plan for the once-troubled firm continues to pay off. He has said he is determined to avoid the messy succession battles that rocked the firm in the 2000s.

Earlier in his tenure, he winnowed the field of immediate contenders, easing out executives including investment banker Paul Taubman and asset-management executive Greg Fleming. The lone survivor of that cohort, Mr. Kelleher, is older than his boss and unlikely to succeed him.

More recently, Morgan Stanley has been grooming a younger crop of executives by giving them experience in different parts of the firm. The group, all in their late 40s or early 50s, includes Andy Saperstein, who runs Morgan Stanley's retail brokerage; Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Pruzan; and Dan Simkowitz, an investment banker who in 2015 was tapped to run the firm's asset-management arm.

"Over the last two years, we have asked several strong executives to take on new and expanded roles," Messrs. Gorman and Kelleher wrote in Tuesday's memo. "These new appointments are a continuation of that multiyear effort."

Mr. Pick, 49, is seen as the favorite. He is credited with reviving Morgan Stanley's stock-trading arm after the financial crisis and has overseen a turnaround of the firm's troubled fixed-income unit since being named head of all sales and trading in 2015. Known by colleagues as excitable with a traders' penchant for profanity, Mr. Pick's track record in the securities business has nevertheless marked him as the front-runner.

French-born Mr. Petitgas will remain based in London and will oversee Morgan Stanley's businesses abroad, which account for about one-quarter of its revenues. It has a strong stock-trading business in Asia and investment-banking and private-equity business in Europe.

Ms. Huang joined Morgan Stanley in 1984 and worked her way up through its merger-advisory business, which is ranked second this year by deal volume. She has worked mostly on healthcare and consumer transactions, including the 2009 combination of Wyeth and Pfizer and a string of deals for Procter & Gamble Co.

Separately on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley promoted its three regional stock-trading heads to globally run the business: Alan Thomas in New York, David Russell in Europe and Gokul Laroia in Asia.

Write to Liz Hoffman at liz.hoffman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 10, 2018 13:20 ET (17:20 GMT)

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