(Bloomberg) -- Morgan Stanley’s $13 billion purchase of E*Trade Financial Corp. might start the clock on Chief Executive Officer James Gorman’s departure.
“I want to see this thing get done, I want to see it get implemented and I’ll be around for a few years to see that happen,” Gorman, 61, said Thursday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “But the future is not me after a few years, it’s the next team. Which it should be.”
Gorman, who’s led Morgan Stanley since 2012, has overseen a massive expansion in wealth management, which provides more stable revenue than the bank’s trading and investment-banking units. Last year he engineered Morgan Stanley’s $900 million purchase of Solium Capital Inc., a company that administers stock plans.
Purchasing E*Trade will bring in clients who are less wealthy than the company’s traditional customers after the firm lost business to retail brokerages, which have been investing heavily in their digital platforms. Morgan Stanley said it expects to complete the all-stock deal in the fourth quarter.
In a wide-ranging interview, Gorman also said:
- He preferred to buy E*Trade -- a company he said has “real clients” and “real revenues” -- over competitors such as Robinhood Financial LLC.
- Morgan Stanley can use some of the technology it’s developed to improve its equities-trading business to also bolster E*Trade’s trading platform.
- The E*Trade deal will change the culture of Morgan Stanley “less than you think.” The CEO drew comparisons to Morgan Stanley’s own stock-plan and wealth-management businesses.
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