James Gorman

James Gorman is an Australian-born executive who joined Morgan Stanley in 2006 after serving in senior roles at Merrill Lynch. He became CEO in 2010, taking over the firm in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Over the following decade, Gorman executed a major strategic pivot away from volatile trading revenues toward the more stable fee income of wealth management. Key acquisitions included Citigroup's Smith Barney brokerage (2009-2012), which significantly expanded Morgan Stanley's wealth management client base, and Eaton Vance (2021), expanding into institutional asset management. He also completed the acquisition of E*TRADE (2020), bringing in millions of retail brokerage clients. These moves transformed Morgan Stanley's business mix dramatically, making wealth and investment management the dominant revenue drivers and reducing the firm's dependence on trading.