James Gorman is stepping down as Morgan Stanley CEO inside the subsequent one year as a revered government who grew the company largely by way of striking wealth control at the leading edge.

Whilst it’s too quickly to grasp what the long run holds for Morgan Stanley’s advisors, or who will change Gorman, trade specialists who paintings with wirehouse advisors and corporations mentioned Friday they be expecting his successor to proceed the company’s wealth control trade down the trail he laid for it.

“Morgan Stanley, beneath the management of James Gorman, has completed what Goldman Sachs up to now has now not,” Mark Elzweig, president of consultancy Mark Elzweig Co., instructed ThinkAdvisor by way of e-mail. “He different their retail earnings streams with the purchases of E-Business and Solium. Either one of the ones companies now supply leads for his or her most sensible advisors. Gorman moved the company clear of a buying and selling store with a retail department right into a well-diversified wealth control powerhouse excited by fee-based trade.”

Two of the specialists mentioned that Gorman’s alternative might be Andy Saperstein, managing director and head of Morgan Stanley Wealth Control.

Will Recruits Wait and See?

Gorman’s departure from the highest process “leaves slightly little bit of an unknown as his messages and affect created [a] secure trail” for Morgan Stanley advisors, reimbursement advisor Andrew Tasnady, managing spouse of Tasnady Friends, instructed ThinkAdvisor by way of e-mail. Normally, advisors are “now not focused on unknowns or adjustments” till they’re certain the means ahead might be calm, he mentioned.

“Advisors knew what to anticipate from becoming a member of MS,” Tasnady mentioned. “Some new doable recruits would possibly pause till they see what the alternative holds relating to any adjustments in course.”

Gorman’s largest contribution to Morgan Stanley’s wealth control trade used to be “figuring out and lobbying [the] remainder of MS control at the worth of wealth control vs. the remainder of MS companies,” however his successor “would possibly cling [a] relatively other imaginative and prescient on [the] relative stability of the companies,” Tasnady added.

In the meantime, in step with Danny Sarch, president of Leitner Sarch Experts, “Gorman’s leaving will handiest affect the counselors if the brand new CEO has a unique imaginative and prescient. It’s too early to inform. I don’t assume the announcement can have any impact on recruiting.”

Louis Diamond, president of Diamond Experts, instructed ThinkAdvisor in a telephone interview: “Gorman has been one of the revered CEOs inside the monetary services and products trade as a complete. The tactic that Morgan Stanley has hired of shopping for Solium and E-Business, and actually making a larger play inside the place of business, has been really well won.”

Diamond predicted: “So long as Morgan continues its technique and specializes in proceeding to increase its assets and platforms for advisors, it apparently shouldn’t have a big affect on advisors as a result of I feel he’s already more or less laid the groundwork and basis for an overly a hit run for whoever the successor is.”

Diamond additionally predicted Gorman’s leaving received’t have an effect on the company’s wealth trade since the company “already derives a lot of its earnings from wealth and funding control, and that technique is easily in position.”