Later this month, Morgan Stanley will make its first significant layoffs under CEO Ted Pick, laying off roughly 2,000 workers.
According to those familiar with the situation, the cuts will affect the whole company, excluding its about 15,000 financial advisers. According to the people, the bank, which employs roughly 80,000 people, had a reduction strategy in place before to the recent market turmoil.
The goal of the move is to control expenses as executives struggle with low employee turnover. A representative for the bank with headquarters in New York declined to comment.
The layoffs at Morgan Stanley follow a wave of layoffs on Wall Street as executives deal with an uncertain economic future. With plans to reduce workers by 3% to 5% this spring, rival Goldman Sachs Group Inc. recently moved up its yearly cull to earlier in the year.
Bankers anticipated a spike in activity following Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election in November, but as clients struggle with tariffs and other policy changes, that hasn’t happened yet. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated earlier this week that “corrections are healthy, they are normal” and that he is not concerned about the market slump that depleted trillions of dollars from equities indices.
At a conference on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley Co-President Dan Simkowitz stated that announcements of mergers and acquisitions as well as fresh equity issues are “definitely on pause.” However, he stated that the company is “adding real headcount” at top investment banking levels in preparation for a capital-markets rebound.
Some of the impending layoffs are performance-based, while others are the consequence of the company moving some of its employees to different locations. According to one of the workers, a tiny percentage of them represent the effects of automation and artificial intelligence within the company, a trend that will contribute to a growing number of job losses in the years to come.
Morgan Stanley has had the poorest performance of any of the major US banks this year, with its shares down 6% so far. Pick became chairman at the beginning of this year after taking over as CEO at the beginning of 2024. He has mostly followed the plan that his predecessor, James Gorman, who oversaw the company for over ten years, came up with.
