Morgan Stanley's top boss has reportedly had more private calls with the US markets regulator chief than any other Wall Street bank

• Morgan Stanley's chief executive James Gorman has had more conversations with the Securities and Exchange Commission's chairman than any other Wall Street bank, according to the Financial Times.
• The two have had at least ten formal conversations in the last three years, including nine calls and one meeting.
• Most of those calls were scheduled ahead of important announcements to be made by Morgan Stanley.
• "If there's a CEO calling every one of the regulators every quarter, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but it would be the exception, rather than the rule," a former bank CEO told the FT.
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Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman has had more calls with the SEC chairman than the head of any other major Wall Street bank, according to a Wednesday report by the Financial Times.

Since he took up office in May 2017, chairman Jay Clayton's calendar shows nine calls and one meeting with Gorman set up around the bank's important announcements or quarterly earnings releases, according to documents seen by the FT.

A similar call pattern was seen between Gorman and Clayton's predecessor, Mary Jo White.

In 2018, the two reportedly had a meeting in which Clayton sought Gorman's "thoughts on areas of potential regulatory overlap/inefficiencies in the supervisory space."

For 2020, the FT found they had telephone conversations in February, March, and April, the months in which Morgan Stanley announced its $13 billion acquisition of discount broker ETrade and unveiled the initial impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Another conversation in June 2017 was noted.

Gorman also seemed to have given Clayton an early notification on a "firm management change" just before the bank's president of the wealth management division, Colm Kelleher, stepped down.

Clayton, who was appointed to the SEC by President Donald Trump, has advised Goldman Sachs during his long stint at Wall Street firm Sullivan & Cromwell. But according to disclosures made at the time of his nomination, Morgan Stanley was not one of his clients, the newspaper said.

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Gorman's efforts to stay in touch with an influential regulator are unlike those of his peers at other banking groups.

According to the SEC chairman's calendar, JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon, Goldman Sachs' David Solomon, and Citigroup's Mike Corbat have only had single-digit, one-on-one calls with him in the past three years. In stark contrast to the rest, Bank of America's chief executive, Brian Moynihan, showed up on his calendar only once at a 2019 meeting that included top US officials and JPMorgan's Dimon.

"As is evident from his calendar, which is publicly available, chairman Clayton has made a point to make himself available to market participants of all kinds, ranging from retail investors to exchanges to advocacy groups to financial institutions to issuers," an SEC spokesperson told the FT.

Over the years, Gorman has continued to practice the "courtesy" of briefing senior regulators at varied agencies to keep them in the loop before they hear news of Morgan Stanley from secondary informants, the FT said, citing two sources.

Senior members in the finance industry told the FT that their companies generally brief regulators ahead of important announcements such as company earnings, but it's not customary for the chief executive to do so.

"If there's a CEO calling every one of the regulators every quarter, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that but it would be the exception rather than the rule," a former bank chief executive told the paper.

Screenshots of the calls arranged through mail exchanges can be seen on the FT.

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