Tim White of Kaye/Bassman Featured in Reuters Article, “Morgan Stanley Unit Aims to Close Lending Gap

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Tim White of Kaye/Bassman Featured in Reuters Article, “Morgan Stanley Unit Aims to Close Lending Gap

Dallas, Texas, 12/3/2012:

In early summer, before layoffs began sweeping across Wall Street, billboard-sized photos of employees were plastered on the walls, pillars and elevator banks of Credit Suisse Group AG’s offices in the United States and abroad.
The museum-quality prints, depicting workers from administrative assistants to senior executives, were emblazoned with motivational words like “Proactive” and “Partner.” By mid-July, however, the photos disappeared and the Swiss banking giant began laying off 2,000 employees.
Security guards prevented employees from taking cell-phone pictures as the posters were stripped away, according to one employee who was present.
“It sent an entirely wrong message,” said an employee, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “Management literally threw away that kind of money on something so trivial, while planning to cut thousands of jobs.”
A bank spokeswoman declined to comment on the internal campaign or the employee’s comments.
Credit Suisse’s timing illustrates the unanticipated dangers of rampant job-cutting, which tend to run in cycles on Wall Street. Employee morale often plummets at a time when survivors are asked to pick up more responsibility and customer relations can suffer as service and relationships deteriorate.
What’s more, layoffs inartfully constructed can come across to shareholders as Band-Aid solutions that at best temporarily cut expenses and at worst pare away reserves of talented people.
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“They finished cutting the fat and now they’re into the muscle and bone,” said Tim White, a managing partner who specializes in wealth management at the recruiting firm Kaye/Bassman International in Dallas.

* Some advisers left due to lack of lending capacity  
* Firm says brokers defect because of big package offers  
* Morgan Stanley looking at ways to bolster lending  
* Unit head Fleming to provide business update on Tuesday

By Lauren Tara LaCapra and Carrick Mollenkamp and Jessica Toonkel  

Dec 3 (Reuters) – In October, Rebecca Rothstein, a Beverly Hills-based private banker to rock stars, top executives and the otherwise rich, abruptly left Morgan Stanley for rival Merrill Lynch. She had spent more than a decade at Smith Barney before Morgan Stanley took control of the retail broker from Citigroup Inc, but she was getting increasingly frustrated that the firm could not lend money to clients to refinance their yachts and vacation homes, people familiar with her thinking said. So in the couple of minutes it takes to walk from one firm to another on Wilshire Boulevard – past palm trees, a Sotheby’s realty office and the Mexican restaurant El Torito Grill – Morgan Stanley lost $2.5 billion in client assets to its rival.   In wealthy enclaves across the United States, Morgan Stanley has suffered a series of defections of top advisers such as Rothstein, in part because they think the firm is weak at providing loans to private banking clients compared with rivals owned by commercial banks. Merrill, a unit of Bank of America Corp, has about 600 bankers working with brokers, for example, compared with 170 bankers at Morgan Stanley. In the third quarter, Merrill reported $1.5 billion in net interest income, compared with $410 million for Morgan Stanley’s wealth unit.  

“It’s built right into the system at Merrill in terms of people and technology,” said Mark Albers, a former manager at Merrill, who is now president of the wealth management recruiting firm Albers & Associates Consulting. Albers said advisers at both firms have told him that lending is “significantly stronger and significantly easier” at Merrill than it is at Morgan Stanley.   Morgan Stanley spokesman James Wiggins said its wealth management unit offers competitive specialized loans through its tailored lending program. Although its loan book is not as big as rivals, the firm is working to build up that area and sees it as a significant growth opportunity, he said. Morgan Stanley needs its Global Wealth Management unit to provide a steady income stream as traditional investment banking and trading businesses come under threat from more regulation, higher capital requirements and a moribund global economy.  

The success of the wealth business depends on its ability to retain brokers, bolster profits from lending and other products, and curb costs. It could play a big role in determining Morgan Stanley’s fate, as well as that of CEO James Gorman and the wealth management unit’s head, Gregory Fleming. “We’re building wealth management to be one of the pillars of Morgan Stanley’s future,” Fleming said in an interview. He now oversees some 17,000 brokers, on par with Merrill, making them the two largest U.S. brokerages.   Still, more than a dozen current and former Morgan Stanley brokers told Reuters they felt the firm’s lending practices put it at a competitive disadvantage. Four brokers said they quit to join the likes of Merrill and Wells Fargo & Co in part because these firms made it easier to pitch loan products. While Morgan Stanley has a robust securities lending business, brokers said the firm is not as strong when it comes to helping wealthy individuals finance specialized purchases such as yachts, luxury cars and organic farms. Brokers also say the firm does not consistently offer competitive lending rates.  

“Lending was the main reason I left,” said one adviser, who quit Morgan Stanley for Merrill within the past six months. “When people want to do business with you and you can’t provide a solution, it impacts your ability to serve your clients, make money for the firm, and for my family.” The adviser said his clients wanted to do things such as secure lending and collateralized lending, which his team could not do easily at Morgan Stanley. In the past month at Merrill, he closed two lending deals and received an inquiry to borrow $80 million.   “Clients are looking for growth capital and now we can provide it,” he added.    

BALANCE SHEET  

So far this year, Morgan Stanley’s wealth unit has lost at least 233 advisers who, individually or in teams, managed at least $100 million in client money – more than twice the number who joined the firm, according to a Reuters tally of moves. They took with them about $37.8 billion in client assets, while those the bank poached from elsewhere brought in only $15.5 billion. (The figures are not complete, based on moves that have been announced and brokers managing at least $100 million.) To be sure, brokers defect for a variety of reasons, including bigger compensation packages. Bank of America, for example, offered Rothstein and her group nearly $30 million to move, according to a source familiar with the situation. Such payments are often staggered over a period of years, based on performance targets. A Bank of America spokeswoman declined to comment on the compensation package. Morgan Stanley executives privately say Rothstein’s exit was proof that Gorman and Fleming would not engage in bidding wars for brokers.

Nevertheless, the 77-year-old bank’s fledgling status as a lender has become a source of broker unhappiness, according to some current and former employees. It has added to other frustrations: An ongoing $300 million a year cost-cutting effort has forced brokers to do more with less; a technology snafu over the summer; and legacy Smith Barney employees are having to adjust to a new culture at Morgan Stanley. Tim White, a managing partner in the private wealth management practice of recruiting firm Kaye/Bassman International Corp, tries to convince Morgan Stanley brokers to defect by telling them rivals offer better lending terms. “Morgan Stanley puts itself at a disadvantage when its credit lending isn’t firing on all eight cylinders,” White said. “Lending is a major advantage for some advisers, particularly those who want to grow their business in as many ways as they can.”

Read the full story.

About Kaye/Bassman
Founded in 1981, Kaye/Bassman has grown to become the largest single-site executive search and recruitment firm in the United States with the simple mission of impacting companies and enhancing careers by providing the finest in professional, executive, technical and scientific search. Kaye/Bassman provides strategic recruiting and executive search solutions in over 20 industry practice areas including construction recruiting, healthcare recruiting, banking executive search, energy recruitment and many more.  Next Level Recruiting Training, a recruiting training organization, Next Level Exchange, a recruiting training best practices information exchange, and Next Level Marketing Communications are also Kaye/Bassman companies.

For additional information or a sample copy, contact:
Darren McDougal
Kaye/Bassman International
(972) 931.5242
(972) 931.9683
communications@kbic.com

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/03/morganstanley-wealth-idUSL1E8MTIJ120121203