Morgan Stanley
(
MS
) has announced its plans to reduce its Asian workforce by 15%.
As per
Bloomberg
, the company plans to lay off employees in its Asian Investment
banking division.
The job cuts will mainly impact country bankers and personnel in
the mergers and acquisitions and global capital market units in
the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan. It is anticipated that
the Asia-Pacific head of oil and gas on the investment-banking
team and the managing director for real estate with focus on
China are most likely to be terminated.
These layoffs follow the company's last week's decision to
retrench 1,600 workers in its Institutional Securities segment.
This will represent about 6% of the segment's total workforce.
Notably, nearly 50% of the reduction will occur in the U.S.
However, the 16,800 financial advisers of the Morgan Stanley
Wealth Management unit are likely to remain unaffected as this
division is a more stable source of revenue for the company.
These job cuts are over and above about 4,000 retrenchments that
Morgan Stanley did last year.
The job cuts do not come as a surprise since many other global
institutions have been doing the same over the last few years.
Market instability and weakening revenue sources have prompted
the company to take this decision in order to control the
spiraling costs and improve profitability amid revenue headwinds
due to a weak economic recovery and stricter capital
requirements.
Other companies that have resorted to job eliminations over the
past several quarters include
Citigroup Inc.
(
C
),
Credit Suisse Group
(
CS
),
Deutsche Bank AG
(
DB
) and
UBS AG
(
UBS
).
Morgan Stanley is scheduled to announce its fourth-quarter
results on Jan 18. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter
is 29 cents per share on revenue expectation of $7,283 million.
The earnings ESP (expected surprise prediction) - the percentage
difference between the Most Accurate Estimate and the Zacks
Consensus Estimate - for the company is negative 20.69% for the
fourth quarter. This, along with its Zacks Rank #3 (Hold),
indicates that the company is likely to miss the Zacks Consensus
Estimate.
Presently, we maintain a long-term Neutral recommendation on the
stock.
CITIGROUP INC (C): Free Stock Analysis Report
CREDIT SUISSE (CS): Free Stock Analysis
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DEUTSCHE BK AG (DB): Free Stock Analysis
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MORGAN STANLEY (MS): Free Stock Analysis
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UBS AG (UBS): Free Stock Analysis Report
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