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Meet Ted Pick, the hard-charging Wall Street trading boss who looks poised to succeed James Gorman as CEO of Morgan Stanley

Sep 4, 2023, 21:28 IST
Business Insider
Arantza Pena Popo/Insider
  • Morgan Stanley's hard-charging trading boss Ted Pick is the frontrunner to succeed CEO James Gorman.
  • The tough-talking dealmaker will have to step out of his comfort zone to be the bank's public face.
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Morgan Stanley veteran Ted Pick is in the running to succeed chief executive James Gorman. He certainly looks the part.

Though Wall Street has dressed down over the last few years, he sticks to his suits and Hermès ties.

"He's right out of central casting," the employee said of his ex-boss. "Say, 'Give me a Wall Street guy,' and they will give you Ted Pick."

He wears a lucky red tie with monkeys chasing tigers on it. Pick once wore Gucci loafers on a fly-fishing trip in the Brazilian rainforest, the former Blackstone president Tony James told Insider with a laugh.

The 54-year-old banker is the front-runner in the CEO race, most of his former colleagues told Insider. Pick is credited with transforming Morgan Stanley's key equities and fixed-income businesses. He has spent his entire career at the bank, earning a reputation for "bleeding Morgan Stanley blue" and being the hardest-working employee, these peers said.

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But it's not a done deal. While Morgan Stanley currently trades at a premium among its Wall Street peers, but its enviable success isn't thanks to Pick. His group has tumbled with the market slowdown, with revenue flat from a year ago and down by 13% from last quarter. Meanwhile, the growing wealth-management arm has buoyed the bank, contributing about 60% of the bank's profits last quarter. Another CEO contender, Andy Saperstein, leads that division, while the third, Dan Simkowitz, heads investment management.

His division is also facing a federal investigation into its block-trading business. That same unit lost nearly a billion dollars in the 2021 implosion of investment firm Archegos Capital Management. Morgan Stanley is cooperating with regulators, and Gorman, who has announced that he plans to retire by May 2024, has said that he wants the matter settled before he steps down.

With an equities background, Pick represents the bank's legacy businesses and perhaps old-school Wall Street itself with his reverence for Morgan Stanley traditions and workaholic reputation. And the traits that make for a winning dealmaker, such as his hard-charging nature and bluntness, might not translate well as the public face of a major bank.

"I always enjoyed his company, but look, he grew up on the Street. He's a lot more like John Mack than James Gorman in terms of style," an ex-managing director said, referring to Gorman's sharp-elbowed predecessor.

Another former managing director compared Pick to Bill Parcells, the domineering NFL coach.

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None of the nine former colleagues who spoke to Insider would speak on the record, even those who had largely positive things to say.

"It's the Ted factor," explained one of his former superiors.

SUBSCRIBE TO READ THE FULL STORY: Meet Ted Pick, the hard-charging 'deal junkie' who rose to the top at Morgan Stanley the old-fashioned way — and looks poised to succeed James Gorman as CEO

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