Which we liveblogged, or at least attempted to.
The tone of the call – which Morgan Stanley CFO Colm Kelleher (CK) – said was designed to promptly address any market concerns about the investment bank, was ever-so-slightly smug.
You know, in that whole, “Oh look! It’s just us and Goldman left. Who knew?” way.
Some extracts from the spiel the call:
CK: “We remain very focussed on maintaining a strong capital position, high levels of liquidity and prudent leverage positions”
CK: “We are well positioned…to take advantage of potential market opportunities”
CK: “Importantly, we continue to focus on liquidity, capital and balance sheet transparency and we are very focused on servicing our clients”
CK: “We are confident that our global platform is strongly positioned to capture the opportunities of the market dislocations and to look for risk adjusted returns”
From the Q&A:
Question from Merrill Lynch analyst – what is the funding viability of the independent broker dealers?
CK: Answer: “The good news guys is that we prefunded and don’t have to issue for the rest of this year” (because, you know, we’re awesome. Awesome.)
CK (in response to similar question from Mike Mayo of Deutsche): “Clearly some of our competitors are impaired…or distracted…or gone”
CK: ”I feel incredibly confident that when normal markets return we’re going to be incredibly well positioned” (nyah nyah nyah)
There was quite a lot of good-natured ribbing on the call, which featured an appearance by Roger Freeman of Lehman Brothers.
Both Mr Freeman and Wachovia’s Doug “The market is making me sick” Simkin asked about hiring and pay.
Simkin: “I guess I just wanted to ask a question around, you know, sort of how the compensation structures are changing for hiring brokers, you know, just looking to get a range for what sort of– you guys are have to pay over like last trailing 12 months and how that’s progressing downward or upward over time. How should we be thinking about that?”
CK: “We’re getting a lot of incoming calls, top quality people and we feel very, very positive like you do about that business. So I think people are attracted to the Morgan Stanley brand and franchise. They like the nature of this business and the actual stages of us as an independent investment bank so we get a lot of incoming and as you can see, we’re beginning to hire quite aggressively.”
Simkin: “Great”
Roger Freeman: “In terms of the hiring that you have talked about and was written about widely, I guess, back in August, what portion of that may be directed at wealth management as opposed to other parts of the business?”
CK: “Frankly, we’ve got some new people we can go after given recent events, Roger.”
Roger that.
Over and out.