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Last week, it was reported that Morgan Stanley would ax 1,600 jobs, or about 6 percent of the global institutional securities group, Bloomberg News reports. The latest round of reductions are expected to begin today and continue into the coming weeks. According to Bloomberg News, half of those cuts are expected to be here in the U.S. The bank is also expected to eliminate about 15% of the i-banking positions in Asia, Bloomberg reports. Meanwhile, Fox Business reports that the Dubai office's equities division will be hit, too. Layoffs have been hitting a bunch of the big Wall Street banks....

Morgan Stanley will cut its workforce by 1,600 in the coming weeks. The job cuts will affect all levels of employees in its investment banking and trading unit in both its United States and international divisions, according to a source. Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), one of the leading banks in the United States plans to cut the number of its employees within its investment banking and trading division by 6 percent or 1,600 in the next few weeks, according to report from Bloomberg, citing an unidentified source familiar with the issue. According to the source, 50 percent of the workforce reduction...

On July 18th, 2012, the German government sold US$5.13 billion worth of 2-year bonds at an average yield of -0.06%. Please note the negative symbol in front of that yield number. What this means is that the German government was able to borrow money for less than nothing. When those specific bonds expire in two years’ time, the German government will pay back the original $5.13 billion minus 0.06%. Expressed another way, investors knowingly and willingly bid the German government $5.13 billion in exchange for bonds that will pay no interest and are guaranteed to lose them money on expiration.1...

David Bahnsen of Newport Beach, California is a Senior Vice President of Morgan Stanley, and also serves on the Board of Advisers of the California Recovery Project with Dr. Arthur Laffer. Bahnsen has abandoned his earlier support of the Ron Paul crusade, and now describes himself as an "economically literate Republican." He is the author of "The Undiscerning and Dangerous Appreciation of Ron Paul." Bahnsen says "It is the ironic that Ron Paul's alleged praiseworthiness comes from his devotion to the Constitution, when in fact, he has emphatically rejected it." Bahnsen has many family and business connections with libertarians. His...

NEW YORK, May 30, 2012 (MeshPress) — Milberg LLP announces that class action lawsuits were filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of purchasers of Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook”) FB -2.29% common stock pursuant to the Company’s May 18, 2012 initial public offering (the “IPO”). Actions were also filed in the Northern District of California. The complaints charge Facebook, certain of its officers and directors, and underwriters of the IPO with violations of the Securities Act of 1933. The actions allege that the Registration Statement and Prospectus issued with the IPO were...

A Senate panel is reviewing Facebook's high-profile stock offering last week amid allegations that the bank handling the IPO may have provided select clients with a negative assessment of the company. A Democratic aide to the Senate Banking Committee says the panel wants to learn more about the initial public offering. The committee seeks briefings with representatives of Facebook, regulatory agencies and others. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the committee's planned inquiry hasn't been publicly announced. Regulators are examining whether Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter for the IPO, selectively informed clients of an analyst's negative view of...

Investors File Suit Against Facebook, Underwriters By DAVID BENOIT Three Facebook Inc. investors filed a civil lawsuit Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, alleging the company and its underwriters failed to properly disclose changes to analysts' forecasts made at the underwriting banks. The suit follows reports that analysts at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. cut their revenue forecasts on Facebook amid the investor roadshow, a change that wasn't widely disseminated. Late Tuesday, Massachusetts sent a subpoena to Morgan Stanley following the reports. Several other plaintiffs' lawyers have said they filed suits over the offering in other courts throughout the...

EXCERPT (Reuters) - Massachusetts Secretary of Commonwealth William Galvin has issued a subpoena to Morgan Stanley over an analyst's discussions with investors on Facebook "The Securities Division has put out a subpoena to Morgan Stanley in connection with the analyst's discussion with certain institutional investors about the revenue prospects for Facebook," a spokesman for Galvin's office said on Tuesday. "Morgan Stanley followed the same procedures for the Facebook offering that it follows for all IPOs. These procedures are in compliance with all applicable regulations," a Morgan Stanley spokesman wrote in an e-mailed statement. **snip** As of Monday afternoon, some customers...

Matt Levine had a very wonky post on Friday afternoon about the dynamics of the Facebook IPO in general and of the very misunderstood greenshoe option in particular. Now that we’ve all had a nice relaxing weekend, it’s maybe worth revisiting that greenshoe, because it’s actually possible, given Facebook’s tumbling share price today, that Morgan Stanley will make a substantial amount of money on it. First, it’s worth explaining how the greenshoe option is meant to work. In the IPO, the underwriting banks — there were lots of them, but let’s just call them all “Morgan Stanley”, for simplicity’s sake...

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Morgan Stanley (MS) shares have had a rough 2012, underperforming those of major competitors by so large a margin that the bank is now lagging even perennial post-crisis losers Citigroup(C) and Bank of America(BAC) according to certain metrics. Morgan Stanley shares have risen just 4.69% through Tuesday, well behind Citigroup, the next-worst performer among the largest six U.S. banks with gains of more than 19% so far in 2012. Bank of America, still the top performer in 2012 despite having lost more than 15% in the past month, has seen its shares rise more than 40%...

The investment banker, accused of stiffing a New York cabbie and then stabbing him in a potential hate crime, pleaded not guilty in a Connecticut courtroom this morning. William Bryan Jennings, a Morgan Stanley bigwig who earns $2 million a year, didn’t say a word as defense lawyer Eugene Riccio raced to the defense bar, entered the not guilty plea and set his client’s next court date for April 12. Jennings, sporting a misplaced smirk on his mug throughout this morning’s appearance, and Riccio then briskly walked to the lawyer’s blue Toyota Tacoma pickup truck and roared out of the...

Moody's announced that it may soon downgrade the long-term credit ratings of 17 of the largest banks in the world. "Capital markets firms are confronting evolving challenges, such as more fragile funding conditions, wider credit spreads, increased regulatory burdens and more difficult operating conditions," wrote the credit ratings agency in a statement. "These difficulties, together with inherent vulnerabilities such as confidence-sensitivity, interconnectedness, and opacity of risk, have diminished the longer term profitability and growth prospects of these firms." Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and UBS could be downgraded by up to three notches. Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Credit Agricole, Deutsche Bank,...

Previously it was Credit Suisse and Citigroup. Now it is Morgan Stanley's turn, as 580 employees in the firm's three New York office learn they are about to get the boot courtesy not of the HR department but the DOL's WARN website, which just happens to be the best real-time indicator for observing the transition of the soon to be former 1% into the 99%.From WARN: Date of Notice:  12/27/2011 Control Number: 2011-0193 Rapid Response Specialist:  Linda Foehr Reason Stated for Filing:  Plant Layoffs Company:  Morgan Stanley (Various NYC sites)1221 Avenue of AmericasNew York, NY  10020 County:  New York | WIB Name: NEW YORK...

(Reuters) - Morgan Stanley will cut 1,600 employees in the first quarter, the bank said on Thursday, as it trims costs in a difficult period for trading and banking revenue. The job cuts will come across all staff levels and geographic areas, spokesman Mark Lake said, including investment banking, trading and back-office functions. Morgan Stanley is one of the last big Wall Street banks to announce major job cuts as analysts have begun slashing fourth-quarter earnings estimates. Other banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc , JPMorgan Chase & Co , Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc have already outlined...

He's been called a "prophet" for being so ready for the attacks, "the Man Who Predicted 9/11" in a History Channel special, and a true American hero by countless others. As tragic as the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, was, the sky-blue day still held unexpected miracles, and Richard "Rick" Rescorla was at the center of one of the greatest -- the evacuation of financial-services behemoth Morgan Stanley. Rescorla , a 62-year-old retired and decorated U.S. Army colonel, had focused on security at the World Trade Center for years. Prior to the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993,...

A well-placed source close to the firm tells us that Morgan Stanley will have to fire 20% of the managing directors in research by the end of the year. Morgan Stanley names around 210 - 240 new managing directors per year, and in 2006, a research paper by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business estimated that Morgan Stanley employed around 780 managing directors, only 10-15% of which are probably in research, to give you a rough idea of how many managing directors will lay off this year. We've emailed Morgan Stanley PR and have not heard back yet....

Back during the financial crisis of 2008, the American people were told that the largest banks in the United States were "too big to fail" and that was why it was necessary for the federal government to step in and bail them out. The idea was that if several of our biggest banks collapsed at the same time the financial system would not be strong enough to keep things going and economic activity all across America would simply come to a standstill. Congress was told that if the "too big to fail" banks did not receive bailouts that there would...

Layoffs across Wall Street started in June and have continued through the summer. Morgan Stanley already begun reducing headcount in its brokerage. But it looks like things are about to get much worse. "The firm is “running layoff scenarios into several thousand folks,” said one person with direct knowledge of the matter" to Charlie Gasparino at Fox Business News. In June, Morgan Stanley's CFO, Ruth Porat, hinted there would be significant cuts coming to the bank's Smith Barney brokerage unit.

Bank of America and Morgan Stanley have agreed to pay more than $22 million combined to settle federal civil charges on improperly foreclosing on military personnel, The Associated Press reports. The latest home or commercial real estate news Sample Between 2006 and 2009, the mortgage lenders foreclosed on 178 military members in 22 states without getting court approval. The military members affected will each receive $125,562, on average. The banks will also continue to investigate whether improper foreclosures occurred in 2009 through 2010.

A Morgan Stanley property fund failed to make $3.3 billion in debt payments by a deadline on Friday, handing over the keys to a central Tokyo office building to Blackstone and other investors, the largest repayment failure of its kind in Japan. It marks the latest fallout from a series of highly leveraged investments by Morgan Stanley , one of the most aggressive investors in worldwide property markets before the global financial crisis. .. This is the largest repayment failure of debt packaged in CMBS in Japan