Morgan Stanley Executive Rich Portogallo to Retire
January 22 2020 - 9:30AM
Dow Jones News
By Juliet Chung
Morgan Stanley executive Rich Portogallo, who helped build the
bank's prime-brokerage business into a Wall Street powerhouse, is
retiring after 34 years at the firm, according to an internal memo
circulated Wednesday.
Mr. Portogallo joined Morgan Stanley in 1986 as one of the first
employees of the firm's then-fledgling prime-brokerage business,
and over the next two decades helped it become a top competitor,
catering to hedge funds and other big trading customers as he rose
through the ranks.
Prime-brokerage businesses lend cash and securities to asset
managers and structure and execute trades for them. A bank's
prime-brokerage business can also foster relationships that bring
in lucrative fees from other parts of the bank.
Morgan Stanley lost a significant chunk of its prime-brokerage
business in 2008, when hedge funds pulled their money following the
collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The en-masse exits by
asset managers threatened to fell Morgan Stanley.
Mr. Portogallo helped the company overhaul its prime-brokerage
operations and woo back clients. Many Wall Street banks tried to
rebuild their prime-brokerage businesses, at least partly to
insulate themselves from the impacts of another client exodus.
Morgan Stanley is among the few that now dominate the
prime-brokerage landscape.
"There is no name more synonymous with the prime brokerage
business at Morgan Stanley than Rich Portogallo," Ted Pick, Morgan
Stanley's chief of trading and investment banking, wrote in the
memo announcing Mr. Portogallo's retirement.
"Some of the firm's most established clients of today were only
an entrepreneur's vision when Rich first identified, connected and
institutionalized their business aspirations," Mr. Pick wrote.
Known to colleagues and clients as Richie, Mr. Portogallo was
most recently Morgan Stanley's global head of institutional
equities clients and services. He worked at Dean Witter Reynolds
before joining Morgan Stanley and was promoted to managing director
in 1994. He later was named global head of prime brokerage.
Mr. Portogallo, 60 years old, is retiring in March; his reports
will report to the global heads of equities, Alan Thomas, David
Russell and Gokul Laroia.
Write to Juliet Chung at juliet.chung@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 22, 2020 09:15 ET (14:15 GMT)
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