Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) reported on Thursday that it swung to a second-quarter loss of $558 million, or 38 cents a share, from a profit of $1.58 billion, or $1.09 a share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue rose to $9.28 billion from $7.96 billion. Analysts, on average, ha expected the company to post a loss of 61 cents a share on revenue of $8.04 billion.
James P. Gorman, President and Chief Executive Officer, said, "While global markets remained challenging this quarter, the Firm delivered higher year-over-year revenues across our three major business segments. Within Institutional Securities, our premier investment-banking franchise ranked #1 in global completed M&A during the quarter and had the highest second-quarter revenues since 2007. Equities achieved further client gains as revenues rose despite a fall in overall market volumes, while Fixed Income showed continued progress and Wealth Management delivered its highest revenues and FA productivity since the MSSB joint venture was formed and had positive flows, as did Asset Management. With respect to costs, our re-engineering initiative and additional expense management efforts underscore our focus to ensure that shareholders benefit from our progress. We also completed the previously announced preferred stock conversion with MUFG, resulting in a one-time, non-cash charge this quarter but removing a significant yearly dividend payment and boosting the Firm's Tier 1 common ratio to an industry-leading level. With this additional capital cushion and the clear momentum across our main businesses, we are well positioned to help our clients navigate the constantly changing markets and create additional value for our shareholders."
Full Disclosure: None.
