Talk:Morgan Stanley

Untitled

This article is all over the place. three times it tries to list the Business units of the firm, the structure and headings are poor compared to to other US Corporate pages and the "recent disputes (2005)" section is a joke. It sets up the article for vandalism. I think we need to rewrite the whole page.

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The whole tone of the "Recent (2005) disputes" section is pretty ridiculous; the passage contains numerous grammatical/punctuation errors, and makes personal judgements aplenty. "also very nice person", "The easy going but hard working Perella" are examples. Also included are biased claims such as "he cant stomach any more the endless Machiavellian intrigues of Purcell" and the entire last paragraph. The recent shake up is important and should be included in this article, but surely we can do better than this (sounds like it was ripped from a business blog somewhere). Will wait for some other input before reverting/revising. --WayneMokane 05:30, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed the POV portions and tried to make it as NPOV as possible. --Kross 06:41, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)

Removed some more POV and fixed some grammer errors. --Kross 19:00, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

I fixed some spelling and grammar errors; I can't vouch for the factual accuracy of the article but this appears NPOV. Pjrich 23:36, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately this page, while not necessarily taking a particular POV, has become riddled with irrelevant and biased comments that often have nothing to do with the company it concerns. I'd recommend somebody we-write this page from scratch so as to provide a better balance for the whole article.

Particular points of concern:

(1) "Sir Howard Davies, chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority, decided not to intervene. Davies was also an employee of the bank". Davies may have been an employee, but this had no impact whatsoever on Morgan Stanley. It is therefore irrelevant to this article and should be removed.

"Some feel these larger damages... / and bad management not forseeing this result...". Who feels that these damages were caused by Morgan Stanley? What is good / bad management? These may be published opinions in newspapers but that does not necessarily make them fact. This paragraph should be removed also.

"This was claimed to be a huge mishandling of the case esp by the 'dissidents' (see Disputes section below) and they claim another proof of bad managment by CEO Purcell". This is appaling grammar and the entire paragraph needs to be amended / removed.

"Recent (2005) disputes" Is a relevant topic, but is eight paragraphs really necessary given it takes up around half the article? Perhaps if somebody could summarise the issue into one or two paragraphs it would balance the article as a whole. Also remember that there are arguments for AND against breaking the company up. To maintain balance the advantages and disadvantages of both could be briefly discussed.

Please also try to use subjective phrases rather than "company ended up falling from a strong position", "Discover Card... stagnated", "Key to the firm's future is Joe Perella", "critical investment banking dept", "which some say he "packed"", "heavy earner for Morgan Stanley" etc. Statements like this are fine if they are backed up with relevant facts - preferably from an annual report - otherwise they have no place here.

"Organization" "Concerned over lackluster performance, eight former senior Morgan Stanley executives, including S. Parker Gilbert, who had been chairman of Morgan Stanley before the merger, and Robert Scott, who had been CEO, sent a letter to the Board on March 3, 2005, requesting immediate replacement of Purcell as President. On March 31, they published a full-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal revealing their position." This paragraph has nothing to do with the internal structure of Morgan Stanley and should be removed.

The above points are a start, but as mentioned above I feel the article has become so biased towards particular opinions that it needs to be completely re-written to restore balance.

Classic Bust-out

No one seems to be talking about the fact that all this financial activity looks more like a classic bust-out all the time. Remember the bust-out in Goodfellas? Everything was sold at a discount because nothing was going to be paid for anyway. More and more, that's what this "crisis" looks like. Oh, and it's not George Bush's administration's fault. It's George Washington's. But it must be getting real bad now. I actually heard a Fox news reporter calling it a scam. I guess she lost all her money in the current disaster. Well, the press has been complicit - especially Fox news, so, it looks like the chickens are coming home to roost. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.94.176.22 (talk) 21:51, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Edits 2005-06-14

I did some major restructuring.

I want to fix this sentence but I don't know what it's trying to say, and don't know many details of the Perelman trial yet:

Morgan Stanley's defense to this trial was severely cramped by rulings that did not allow it to prove otherwise, the rulings caused by its refusal to provide documents for the trial.

Removed the phrase "(zero / nada)" from the paragraph about Discover card. I also need to check up on the facts behind this paragraph, as it says the opposite of everything I've heard.

Removed the phrase "at Morgan Stanley" from "Debate continues at Morgan Stanley over Purcell's strategy..." because there is general agreement among employees with the so-called strategy. The primary sources of debate are outside analysts and the media.

Removed the following entire section, since it is rife with poor style, NPOV emphasis, and is primarily a personal judgement/rant

The long history of major Wall street firm's weak ceo's appears to be un broken , with none of the various sides of firms experts competent to be ceos - as neither trading side experts, investment banking side experts, transaction side or deriatives experts has the overall proper industry view to run any firm.

Especially telling is that no major or ANY Wall street firm made any signficant amounts of profits or capital in the massive bull run of 1988 to 2001 where profits in the 100s of billions were readily available with all firms joyfully squealing over pittance level profits of at most 1-4 billion a year...when profits of 10 to 100 billion a year were EASY. And these ARE the clowns advising you about 'your' investments when they do not know how to make a profit themselves in such an easy bull run market.

I also removed this entire section, because, as noted, this section is way too long and unbalances the article:

Phil Purcell is known for being the management consultant who advised Sears to purchase Dean Witter Reynolds and then became CEO of Dean Witter. At the time of the acquisition, Purcell had no prior securities experience. After Sears bought Dean Witter, he presided over the company for 20 years. The company ended up falling from a strong position in the top ten (by many security industry ratings standards) into the top 25.

In addition, while rival Citibank's credit card business swelled from 20 million to 140 million cards between 1985 and 2005, the Discover Card (over which Dean Witter presided) stagnated. However, even the credit card growth that did occur did so at Sears, where 30 million credit cards were sold simply by handing out cards to the Sears account holders who already had Sears cards. No further growth occured from that time 1984 to present.

Also made several word substitutions, corrections, formatting fixes, etc. --WayneMokane 21:46, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I added some language to balance the legal proceedings section, added an overview section, and reordered the sections in a more sensible manner (overview and facts near the top, recent events near the bottom). I'm a bit worried that a lot of the article is starting to feel like a bad Powerpoint presentation; any improvements welcomed. I'm also satisfied that the article is now balanced, so I'm removing the NPOV tag for now, assuming there are no objections...? --WayneMokane 20:12, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Dear anonymous user (205.188.117.67), Your personal views on this article, the companies or people involved, or me are completely irrelevant, as are mine. That isn't the point of Wikipedia. You can tell yourself whatever you want to help yourself sleep at night, but the reason I've been reverting your edits is because they have, by and large, been biased, emotional, and personal, completely inappropriate for Wikipedia. See the Wikipedia:NPOV policy. Sentences such as this:

(note this article is heavily contrived and edited by paid stooge for Morgan Stanley - see discussion page with his droning on and on about his tiny views of Wall Street and his website explaining he is a college student with no Wall St experience, etc)

are ludicrous for many reasons. I'm not going to sink to the level required to argue with you. Now why don't you sign up for an account and get yourself some credibility? --WayneMokane 7 July 2005 14:25 (UTC)

Personal attacks

To the anonymous users who have been slandering me on this article,

Please do not post personal attacks directed to me in the article itself. They have absolutely no relation to the subject in question and are totally inappropriate and out of place in Wikipedia. I'm a big boy and I certainly don't take offense from them (especially ones so groundless and poorly worded as yours), but they simply don't belong at all in the article. If you have something to say to me, put it on the talk page of the article or my personal talk page.

In the meantime, keep feeding yourself BS about some conspiracy theory about how I'm some "hired goon" of ex-CEO Purcell (whom I haven't said one positive thing about, if you check the history). Any rational person will realize almost instantly that even if I was some undercover PR croney being paid off by execs, I wouldn't be wasting my time on some Wikipedia article, considering WP is about the most anti-large-corporation community I can fathom. You think any higher-ups actually give a rat's ass about what the "Morgan Stanley" Wikipedia article contains? Don't kid yourself. While I do work for the company, and yes, I like the company, my motivation with trying to keep the article neutral has only to do with maintaining the spirit of neutrality and balance to both sides in Wikipedia articles. Let's face it, you have not even made the slightest effort to maintain neutrality in the article, using NPOV language about the company and attempting to slander myself. You'll also notice that I haven't attempted to remove any criticism from the article which is actually well-worded and presented in neutral language.

My advice is to grow up and learn how to be part of the community. I look forward to your future well-worded and non-biased contributions.

--WayneMokane 17:36, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Current tag

I don't know what the historical use for this tag has been, but it seems appropriate for this article, so I'm not sure why it was removed. The changes in the management/structure of the company have been almost daily since March of this year, and I don't think the dust has settled yet. If it is unnecessary, please explain why. --WayneMokane 15:17, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

"Mideast Takeover of Morgan Stanley"

I have no idea how any of the claims here pass for verifiable, nor why personal attacks against me and another editor are being added to the article. As this further violates the original research policy to make a point, I can only see further insistence on such edits to the article absent justification here as vandalism. Buffyg 16:14, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Article Problems

Everyone please note that according to the wikipedia corporations style guide, articles on coprorations should be primarily about the surving companies history (as recorded by the SEC). In other words, this article should have the history of Dean Witter Discover after its spin-off, then its history after purchasing Morgan Stanley. It may also include the history of the legacy morgan stanley, but only after the history of dean witter. Dates such as the founding date, should be based on the surving company of the present.

Please provide a link to the guide referenced above. Buffyg 19:52, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

It's quite clear that both Dean Witter and Morgan Stanley both remained "surviving companies" after the merger so this seems a moot point. --WayneMokane 19:23, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Morgan Stanley on 19 December decided to spin off the Discover Card unit of their business but was removed. The note was first displayed in the Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures section. Should this even be listed in the main Morgan Stanley article???

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aMQG2qXOEUi0&refer=home

Two links removed

I've removed two links to supposedly related companies, Morgan Stanley Investments,Inc and Morgan Stanley Chile S A. None of them is owned by or otherwise related to Morgan Stanley; references to the first one appear only in Wikipedia, and the very few references to the second one point to a Chilean group, Luis Eduardo Silva de Balboa, Ignacio Hurtado Fernández, Alberto Donoso Barros, associated with a Canadien concern.

"Quick facts" section cleanup

Someone please link to the specific style guideline this section is violating (I'm having trouble finding anything in the style guidelines). Thanks. --WayneMokane 20:29, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

To answer my own question, Wikipedia:Embedded_list#Lists_within_articles. --WayneMokane 20:33, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I was going to mention (then found this discussion section), shouldn't the quick facts be moved to the bottom and renamed Trivia? That's what a great majority of pages on wikipedia seem to do anyway? Ronius 17:55, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Moved "Quick Facts"

Following my previous message, I have decided to move the "Quick Facts" to the bottom, and I also renamed it to "trivia" to keep in line with most other wikipedia pages. If there's a problem with this, feel free to revert/undo the changes, but at least explain why. --Ronius 18:03, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Maintenance templates

I've added several maintenance templates to the article.

The introduction

The introduction consists of just a single sentence followed by a bulleted list entitled "Overview". It needs to be cleaned up and made into clear prose.

Offices

Is this section in any way necessary? Is there any information here not easily available from the company's website, Google, or a telephone directory for that matter?

Trivia

Relevant, citable information from here needs to be worked into the rest of the article. The rest needs to be removed.

External links

Way too many. I know other company articles have similarly long sections, but those need to be trimmed down too to comply with WP:EL

Looking forward to some lively editing/discussion! —Elipongo (Talk|contribs) 03:34, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Morgan stanley logo.gif

Resolved

 – Thanks to DropDeadGorgias (talk · contribs) for taking care of this. —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 00:11, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Image:Morgan stanley logo.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 23:48, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Can we please have a list of all offices?

Where are MS's offices worldwide? Thanks. 205.228.73.13 14:02, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Isn't such a thing available from the company's website? No need for a sprawling list in the article, IMHO. —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 14:08, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Added material on FINRA regulatory action. Balance2214 21:04, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Should Tops Friendly Markets Be Added?

Morgan Stanley recently bought the Tops Friendly Markets chain. I think this should be included on the page. cmulgrew (talk) 00:29, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Some major changes

I saw that the article's intro was not properly written. I have rewritten it, please have a look and remove the {{introrewrite}} template if the necessary has been done. Some more major changes are --contents from overview have been merged with organization to remove repetation. Also, history section has seen a lot of addition. Please have a look at the attempt and put your contributions too. Apoorv Khurasia (talk) 12:19, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Quoting news sources

Quoting news articles is not encyclopaedic. I have removed the line that reads "to save itself from mortgage crisis".

Controversies and Lawsuits

Serious allegations such as sex discrimination charges are unsourced! How long should they remain? Zencv ^{Lets discuss} 22:00, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

CBS news implicates them in the oil hike crisis as the main cause. Any mention? Furthermore, new news articles seem to indicate that MS is renting tankers and storing millions of barrels of surplus oil over seas to take it off the market, driving prices up. This company has contributed nastily to the 2008 Oil Crisis and it should be mentioned.J. M. (talk) 16:37, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Revenue

Why does revenue indicate an increase (i.e. an upward arrow)? Didn't Morgan Stanley's revenue decrease from $85bn in 2007 to about $62bn in 2008? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.80.128.183 (talk) 02:27, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Notable MS employees: Could add Ben Rosen, who at one point was CEO at Compaq. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aajax (talk • contribs) 02:41, 1 May 2009 (UTC)