Earnings Labs

Morgan Stanley (MS)

Q1 2014 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 17, 2014

$188.73

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Transcript

Greg Fleming

Management

Great. Thank you, Christian, and good afternoon. That was abysmal. Somebody want to respond? Good afternoon. Thank you. I hope the conference has gone well on behalf of Celeste Mellet Brown, who runs investor relations for Morgan Stanley. We’re pleased to be here and have an opportunity to speak with all of you today. We have three topics and I’m going to try to move through them so that we can leave time for Q&A. I’m happy to take questions across the range of my responsibilities or Morgan Stanley wide questions, but we’re really are here to talk about Investment management and we would like to try to focus, okay? Three things we’re going to run through today; one is Investment management and how it fits within Morgan Stanley. As Christian said, we have a sizeable institutional securities business, large wealth management business and Investment management is often third in the dialog. We made a lot of progress with our Investment management business. It’s an important part of Morgan Stanley and I’m going to start by placing it within the context of the overall firm. Second topic is the progress that we’ve made in Investment management over the last two years or so. We’ve -- About three years ago at this time, I was in front of a group like this and we set out some objectives for the business. Some very clear benchmarks in where we’re looking to take it. We wanted to mark to market that, that presentation, those objectives stayed[ph] very, very against those. And then my third topic, I will conclude with what do we have going forward? What can we expect over the next three years? And we’ll end the presentation by giving you some sense of not only the strategic priorities, but also what…

Greg Fleming

Management

Within the wealth management business a very important benchmark principal for us is open architecture. And our financial advisors need to know they hear it from me consistently all the time that what we are not going to do is do focus exclusively and taking care of their clients and not worry about where the product comes from. Having said that, if Investment management in Morgan Stanley has great performance across the strategies we want to make that as readily available to those advisors as possible. So that if they are working on a client from an asset allocation standpoint and they want to increase their exposure of alternatives, private equity Asia perform better than anybody else’s as is often is we want to make sure that that capability is made available that product is made available to financial advisors. So we’re working hard on that we’ve made a lot of progress on that particularly for clients that are buying above certain minimums but we want to make product more broadly available for advisors so that they can bring it down whenever they think it makes sense. Did I answer your question? Christian Bolu – Credit Suisse: With all of the AUMs and traditional are distributed through your proprietary sales force?

Greg Fleming

Management

No, most are institutional across the institutional landscape but classic mix of institutions there is some intermediaries sold outside of Morgan Stanley and some through Morgan Stanley Wealth Management but it’s a small percentage. But again, I think given the performance it should be more over time so ultimately that’s up to the advisor I just want to make it easily available to the advisors financial advisors to put their clients in it. Christian Bolu – Credit Suisse: I think you merchant bank and the alternative investment side, just given some of the least strong tailwinds behind some of the publicly traded alternative asset managers at a much strong performance they had how does Morgan Stanley compete in that environment? What’s the competitive advantage of Morgan Stanley against I guess versus those peers?

Greg Fleming

Management

I would say Christian three things, one we have great investment talent so they are managing these platforms well a lot of them are long tenured within Morgan Stanley so they are happy working there. And this is obviously well into those post poker environment so we got really good teams that we think is good as anybody in the industry and the results would support that. The second thing is the Morgan Stanley global footprint in terms of the ability to introduce clients and potential investors to these is very strong and the teams all know that and they agree with that. Morgan Stanley is a name around the world where clients feel comfortable doing business with Morgan Stanley across the full range of what we do because it is a client focused firm with a long history in that. So the brand and the asset gathering is positive and then the third thing is that a lot of things have happened within Morgan Stanley which I was talking about before, including risk management and other things can be brought to bear that are positive on the platforms that LPs are getting without getting anything extra for it. So we think it’s a positive. Christian Bolu – Credit Suisse: May be ask you two put your old bank and couple of questions in terms of quick wondered fits very well within Morgan Stanley’s capital like strategy it’s one you advocate quite strongly for. Any thoughts of actual rates in growth in the business M&A the [inaudible] has paid handsomely in the wealth management business. Any thoughts of doing that in the investment management business?

Greg Fleming

Management

Christian, I was asked that question roughly three 3.5 years ago and I was pretty clear that time that we had a lot to do to get the business in a position where you could successfully integrate an acquisition and as Christian said I did advise on many of these acquisitions over many years and ‘90s and the first part of the last decade. They are not easy to do there is often cultural different cultural fit between the firm you’re acquiring and the buyer. So many of them number of them worked many of them didn’t. So for me the bar is high on acquisition. Having said that, if we can add some bulks some assets bringing portfolio managers and teams and a business that fits with what we’ve got we would do that because it fits with the capital wide strategy. We want to be bigger in Investment management, we’re on our waist to do that and if we need to and what I load out here was organic. The $500 billion target in assets under management as we start to leave 2016 is just we keep doing what we’re doing. But if we can add a business, assets teams through acquisition, that fit with the existing business and we think we can integrate and bring in and part of Morgan Stanley Investment management we would do that. Christian Bolu – Credit Suisse: Okay.

Unidentified Analyst

Management

Just want to add -- Hi as the most important focus for capital is to continue to increase capital returns to shareholders. So Greg obviously is focusing right thing for the firm as a whole and we’re very focused in returning capital James said in the last earnings call?

Greg Fleming

Management

Yes, James and Ruth covered that at length in the fourth quarter earnings call. That said on a macro level when you get into the business unit which is what I was answering, if there is something that makes sense we look at it that the bar is high. Christian Bolu – Credit Suisse: Wait for questions, maybe I’ll ask you a question on [inaudible] ahead of wealth management clearly that business has had quite strong tailwinds for quite a while now. A lot of that was market driven, cost rationalization, increase in lending, what are you seeing on the actually core advisor front in terms of competition for new advisors or taking on all losing market share to on that front?

Greg Fleming

Management

Let me answer two sides of that one and now we’re talking about our wealth management business a lot of what’s happened over recent years was us running the business well and focusing on expense. So if you looked at last year our revenues were up $1.1 billion or $1.2 billion and our pre-tax earnings were up almost as much as that. So we have had very positive margin pretax margin expansion and a lot of that has been on the expense side of the equation there is been some revenue left but it’s actually been making sure that revenue gets converted into pretax going forward we’d love to see it be more about revenue growth. The biggest opportunity for us there is our banking and lending footprint. By the middle of next year, we will have $135 billion in deposits in business making us one of the largest banks in the country. The best thing we could do with those deposits is lend them back to our clients and we’re working hard to do that. And for us that’s the biggest potential revenue and pre-tax lift available to us. From an advisor standpoint to get over with your question, we think the recruiting environment it’s a little bit quieter than it was from a macro standpoint. But for us, we are doing a better and better job attrition has continued to come down. And the reason for that is we have gotten through a difficult technology integration. We have a new added technology within wealth management Chris Randazzo who we brought over from a major competitor and he and my operating heads are operating heads have a great strategy in place to really drive technology going forward. Our advisors know that our motto is unique. We are the only wealth management organization of size that’s not part of the big bank. They like the culture they like the environment and we would expect to have lower levels of attrition going forward now that they’ve seen what Morgan Stanley wealth management can look like as an integrated entity. Christian Bolu – Credit Suisse: Great. I think we’re out of time. Thank you very much, Greg.

Greg Fleming

Management

Thank you very much.