Morgan Stanley CEO To Inherit Bank In Transition

STEPHEN BERNARD

NEW YORK (AP) — Morgan Stanley's incoming CEO will be facing a drastically different landscape on Wall Street from when John Mack took over in 2005.

James Gorman is poised to take over a bank that some say is still looking for direction after surviving a credit crisis that wiped out most of its competitors.

Barclays Capital analyst Roger Freeman said Morgan Stanley was still in "soul-searching mode" as it looks to strike the right balance between rebuilding an investment banking and trading business that struggled during the credit crisis and its growing retail brokerage operations.

Morgan Stanley announced the CEO succession plan late Thursday. Gorman will take over the CEO post in January, while Mack will remain at the company as chairman.

Gorman, a 51-year-old native Australian, joined Morgan Stanley in February 2006 and most recently served as the bank's co-president. He was one of the first executives Mack hired when he returned to the firm in 2005 after being forced out in a power struggle four years earlier.