Gorman in New York.
Photographer: Justin J. Wee for Bloomberg BusinessweekJames Gorman, Morgan Stanley’s Strategist
Morgan Stanley unveiled a $13 billion takeover of retail brokerage ETrade Financial Corp. in February, then sprang another surprise in October with the $7 billion purchase of the fund company Eaton Vance Corp.
Inside Morgan Stanley’s Times Square skyscraper, Gorman is mostly alone. The faces he sees are those of stern-looking bankers in oil paintings lined along the wood-paneled wall outside his office. They’re reminders of the people who came before him at a company that traces its roots to the Gilded Age tycoon John Pierpont Morgan.
After a decade atop the place, Gorman has made his own big mark, with two of the largest deals by a top Wall Street bank in years. They came along with record profits and a soaring stock price. “How could you not be happy?” Gorman asks. “We just hit a $100 billion market cap, we’ve done two signature transactions in two areas of the business where we needed to do something, and we’ve navigated Covid without the organization falling apart.”