James Gorman, who has held the top stop at Morgan Stanley for the past 13 years, is about to call it quits.
Gorman announced he will leave the company within the next 12 months Friday at the company’s annual shareholder meeting. While no successor has been named, Gorman said the company has identified three “very strong senior internal candidates” for the role.
“The specific timing of the CEO transition has not been determined, but it is the board’s and my expectation that it will occur at some point in the next 12 months,” he said. “That is the current expectation in the absence of a major change in the external environment.”
After he departs the CEO office, Gorman will remain as executive chairman “for a period of time”.
“We believe this structure will ensure the continued stability of Morgan Stanley while at the same time positioning it for a decade of exciting growth under new leadership,” he said. “In the meantime, I am honored to continue to serve as Chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley, as I have been doing for what is now my 14th year.”
Gorman became CEO of Morgan Stanley in 2010 and is one of the longest-serving CEOs in the industry, alongside JPMorgan Chase’s James Dimon and Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan. He took over the bank in a greatly weakened state after the 2008 mortgage crisis and helped it grow into a wealth management powerhouse.
Gorman, 64, hinted that his time might be drawing near earlier this year.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV this January, he said: “You plan a generation of people who can take over.”
Ted Pick and Andy Saperstein, the New York-based firm’s co-presidents, and investment-management chief Dan Simkowitz are widely considered to be the candidates for the top job.
Under Gorman’s watch, Morgan Stanley was a big part of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. Roughly $3.4 billion of the bank’s balance sheet is tied up with loans it made to Twitter Inc. as part of Musk’s acquisition of the social-media company.
He has been a proponent of workers returning to the office and his comments have rubbed some workers the wrong way.
“They don’t get to choose their compensation, they don’t get to choose their promotion, they don’t get to choose to stay home five days a week,” said James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley, in an interview with Bloomberg. “I want them with other employees at least three or four days.”
Morgan Stanley shares have more than tripled in value under Gorman’s watch.