Saturday, July 21, 2012

Morgan Stanley Gets Some Tough Advice From Whitney



 Find a new “rich uncle” or a new leader.  According to the WSJ’s Deal Journal those are two of the suggestions, helpful or not, that Wall Street analysts have for Morgan Stanley in the wake of a disappointing second-quarter report.

Meredith Whitney, of her own Meredith Whitney Advisory Group, said there was little to “chat about” given the particularly weak 4% return on equity Morgan Stanley sported.  “It can’t be much fun to be a shareholder of Morgan Stanley, and, things got a lot worse this past June when Moody’s downgraded the company’s debt to one of the lowest ratings of its competitors,” Whitney wrote, as the first sentence of her research report. “With a 4% ROE, at what point does it make sense for Morgan Stanley to begin looking for ‘a rich uncle’?”

Morgan Stanley already has what some could call a rich uncle in Mitsubishi Financial Group.
She also said “the reality is that they currently have a glaring competitive disadvantage” and that banks with bigger balance sheets, including Bank of America and Citigroup, will continue to outperform Morgan Stanley….

Find out more at http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2012/07/20/morgan-stanley-gets-some-tough-advice-from-whitney-mayo/?mod=WSJBlog

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