Morgan Stanley's Gorman to step down from exec. chairman role

Morgan Stanley (MS) executive chairman James Gorman will be stepping down from his role at the end of the year. Speaking at the company's annual shareholder meeting, Gorman, who formerly served as the bank's CEO, cited the "successful" transition to new CEO Ted Pick as his reason for stepping away from the position.

Yahoo Finance's Madison Mills and Seana Smith explain why the news shouldn't be a surprise to shareholders.

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This post was written by Stephanie Mikulich.

Video Transcript

Now Morgan Stanley's executive chairman James Gorman is stepping down at the end of the year.

The former CEO signing the successful transition of his successor, Ted pick on.

It's important to note that this is not the newest of news.

He did tease this back in May of 2023.

He said he'd stay for the succession plan, then give up his chairman title.

But some context here, he joined the firm in 2006.

Then after the global financial crisis, Morgan Stanley obviously in a lot of trouble and he was able to kind of push the company through that time period when it was really a make or break moment for them and then bring it out on top as this kind of wealth management, Herculean firm in the space.

One thing I'm interested in is who is going to take on this chairman role because we see a lot of the other big banks in the space.

The CEO and the chairman are the same person is that going to be the case?

Yeah, it's really been remarkable just what he has done in terms of better positioning in the bank over the last four years.

It's been 14 years at the helm and really has transitioned it to into a wealth management powerhouse like you were just saying, and he did that while also um positioning Ted pick to be the successor, naming him as his successor.

Staying on through this transition story.

But I bring this up because he was also able to retain the two other top CEO candidates when it comes to Andy Saperstein and also when it comes to Dan Simit, and that is something that you don't necessarily see on Wall Street.

So again, it seems like he has said, actually putting in his words, a successful transition to his successor, Ted pick and I think many people are wondering what the bank is exactly going to look like under Ted pick here going forward.

But again, Morgan Saline's first quarter earnings here, profit beat expectations and we certainly did see a resurgence and a surge here of its investment banking, a unique growth in its wealth management business.

So momentum to the upside here, you're looking at a one year chart of Morgan Stanley, those shares up just about 20%.