Morgan Stanley (MS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Thank you very much, everybody. So first off, congratulations, Ted. We are thrilled to have Ted Pick with us, CEO of Morgan Stanley. Ted, I'm so thrilled to welcome you to the Morgan Stanley Financials Conference as CEO. So pleasure to be with you and thrilled with -- thrilled to be able to sit down with you to discuss the vision for the firm that you have.

Thanks for having me. It's a real thrill to be here.

I do have to read a disclaimer, as you all know. This discussion may include forward-looking statements, which reflects Morgan Stanley management's current estimates and is subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. Morgan Stanley does not undertake to update -- or to update the forward-looking -- does not undertake to update the forward-looking statements. Sorry for that. This discussion, which is copyrighted by Morgan Stanley and may not be duplicated or reproduced without their consent, is not an offer to buy any security. So with that out of the way, welcome again, Ted.

Great to be here.

I did want to kick off with just a very basic question on how does it feel to be CEO of Morgan Stanley, a place you call your "second home" in your shareholders' letter?

Well, Betsy, first of all, it's fantastic to be here with you. And it's a real thrill. It's a real thrill. And it's been a whirlwind since the beginning of January. We were in Davos, and we met with global corporates and had 2 great dinners. Fantastic. We even had competitors come to our dinners, which is fantastic, sort of reunion of folks we've known for many years. And then I was off to Japan. And that was important, I think, because we meet semiannually with our Japanese partners at MUFG. We think Japan, for so many reasons, which we'll get into, is one of the most exciting places in the world for us to be. And the Japanese have been with us since the financial crisis. We don't consider that a financial investment. We consider as strategic partnership. Then I came back and visited with our Boston shareholders, who have owned the stock since 2010, '11, '12, and they were kind of sizing me up against Mr. Gorman. And I told them, I said, "Listen, if this meeting doesn't go well, please don't sell as I'm going down the elevator. It will be bad for morale." And so everyone had a good sense of humor about it because they've been in for the long term. And for me, it was special because I also got to visit a bunch of the trading desks, visit with folks who I've known with you for many years at some of these great institutions. And then I spent a bunch of time with our brokers, our top FAs down in Chairman's Club in Cayman, our very top-performing financial advisers who are fantastic in the engine of our extraordinary Wealth Management story. Spent a bunch of time in D.C. with the official sector, regulators around the world, and then clients. Clients, clients, clients. So West Coast. Europe, twice. I choose France again this past week and U.K. and Zurich and now here in New York. So it has been a whirlwind. And the first quarter, I think, set the tone for the year. It was a solid quarter against all the financial metrics that we laid out in the strategic plan, 20% returns on tangible. So set a really nice tone for 2024.

Okay, great. Well, we're going to get into that in a little bit. But beforehand, I do want -- I have another follow-up question related to the shareholders' letter when you said there has been a change in leadership but no change in strategy. And I did want to ask so investors can hear it in your own words, how do you describe Morgan Stanley's strategy?

Well, the strategy that we've laid out is a good one. We raise, manage and allocate capital for individuals and institutions. That's the strategy. And one-sentence, two-sentence elevator speech is always important, right? And it took James all those years to put it together. And I do think the legacy of James coming through and how it's affected the firm and its future path is really important. Part of the reason we feel so strongly that the strategy be unchanged is because it's working. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, but also how the strategy and the culture come together. So James came in and had a vision, truly McKinsey at its very best. He saw a vision for the consolidation of the U.S. Wealth Management business. And we did that over the course of 15 years, as you well know, first with Smith Barney, which was an arduous 3-, 4-year integration, and then during the onset of COVID with E*TRADE and Eaton Vance. And in so doing we've really won or one of the big winners of the advisor channel, one of the big winners of the direct channel, self-directed channel and a winner in workplace. And when you think about all those combined, it kind of feels like we got a Wealth Management machine that is at escape velocity, it's going to keep ongoing. And sure enough, now we were $5.5 trillion of assets under management, that business, another $1.5 trillion in the Investment Management business. But what James did, which is really interesting, and I'm hoping to play a really small role in the integrity of the kind of the bio of what Mr. Gorman has done is he didn't just have a vision of wealth. He, as an outsider, right, which is what people viewed him as when he came in '06, looked at our firm and a franchise that was fading a little, and then, of course, nearly collapsed fully during the financial crisis. We had already had our first blow-up in '07 and then '08. And on the long road back, and it takes a village, we had others that have retired, gone to other firms and post-retirement life, but most of the Morgan Stanley crew from that period were on that arduous climb to restore the blue of the Morgan Stanley brand. And James never made big speeches about that. He never said, "Let's all get along." It was just sort of understood that rigor would matter again, some humility of what happened, but that we wouldn't be imprisoned by that. So here we are, 15 years later, and we've got this Wealth and Investment Management business at $7 trillion. And we've got a global investment bank through all the years of change and financial repression. Those are our 2 major businesses, and they're both working. And his legacy is a lasting one, in that respect, because what we achieved is not just the strategic aim of driving a Wealth Management business that is not always durable and relatively easy for investors to model, but also has growth engines within it, but then a vibrant global Investment Bank, and that the 2 can start working together. That is where he left off with those 2 major businesses as leaders, and it's an extraordinary legacy. And I think it's a testament to strategy and culture working as one.

Okay. This brings me to my last question about the shareholders' letter, where you mentioned that you aim to do it even better. And this is in reference to the integrated firm, which you are clearly extremely passionate about. Can you give us a sense as to what you mean when you say integrated firm? How do you expect your managers to deliver on the integrated firm? And where do you see the biggest opportunities? What's the growth path from delivering on this integrated firm?

I am, thank you for that. I'm very passionate about it. I'm also well aware that such phraseology exists at every firm like ours. At some level, it's a motherhood and apple pie, right? Let's all work together. But the succession process, thanks to James, Andy Saperstein, Dan Simkowitz and the teams around it, the dozen of us on the operating committee, there's 3 dozens on the management committee, the 2,300 managing directors of the firm, the 80,000 employees, we've been unified for a long time. You can't just wake up one day and say, "Let's get along." And I think some of that is a function of what we went through all those years ago and then getting even closer together during COVID. Now we had, in the Investment Bank, the integrated investment bank, which was sort of almost a ha-ha concept 10 years ago, where bankers, new issue folks in our global capital markets business, equities, sales and trading folks and fixed income sales and trading folks, will all get along. Bankers and traders, kind of put broadly, and the research department would get along. That was almost like a punch line. And we work that really hard. How do we work that? We had people mobilized in different places, and they have the grit and the memory of what we could be. And so a lot of those people are now running the divisions inside the integrated investment bank. And what Dan Simkowitz is going to do, in his capacity as Co-President, having the Investment Bank [ going in ] is go even harder on that. The integrated investment bank continuity, on steroids, really get after asset managers and asset owners, really start covering holistically. He and Dan, for example, will go to meetings together, top-of-house meetings. That's super powerful, right? So that's the Investment Bank. Well, integrated, of course, works in the wealth context, too, because in March of 2020, we announced E*TRADE. And as James talked about, they were months and months in negotiation with Tom Faust, Eaton Vance, before they even had a live meeting because that was in the heart of COVID. And the Wealth and Investment Management teams have integrated those 2 fantastic brands inside of Morgan Stanley. So They know integration, and we're still on the last mile of getting that right. So the integrated firm, in this respect, if you think about the texture of our firm, the history of our firm, it's actually not that much a leap of faith. Let's use one example that I like. Workplace, okay? So Workplace doesn't sound particularly sexy with all the different things that we could talk about, right? But I get really excited about it. I said that we have the advisor channel, okay? And we have the 15,000 FAs that are out there producing and gathering wealth. And then we have the self-directed E*TRADE channel, which is a powerhouse. So those are done. What about Workplace? Okay. So what about Workplace? We have 50% in market cap weighting of the S&P 500 on our Workplace platform. That is a function of Smith Barney of E*TRADE of Morgan Stanley and probably one of the most brilliant moves of Mr. Gorman and Andy and the team, which was to buy a company called Solium up in Canada. They had the technology necessary to get Solium Morgan Stanley [ reforge ] on people's desktop. Imagine that we're in a world of defined contribution, writ large, a factory floor, everyone owns stock. Well, that's a process. If you look at your exec comp, you look at your incentive comp and you have a 3-year vest, and then there's tax withholding, and you have your first event. Where does that cash go? It goes into an E*TRADE account. Then after some time, thanks to some FAs at your company that has medium financial literacy, but needs to be educated. They're answering a lot of questions on -- and these are good questions. How do you think about withholding? How do you think about potentially a charitable donation? How do you think about reinvesting proceeds without too much tax friction? Those FAs are ready for when the individual moves to a higher level, okay? So the entire funnel of wealth is now captured inside of Workplace. We have 50% of the S&P weighting, as I said, which is $500 billion of vested assets, $500 billion of unvested assets. They have a 3-year cycle, so 1/3 coming through every year, that's $1 trillion. And then there's another $1 trillion held by our competitors. And they'd say, "Okay, that's really interesting, reasonable TAM, good market share, great. But what's that got to do with the integrated firm?" What that has to do with the integrated firm is that the CHRO at every company that you all cover sits 3 doors now from the CEO. There's not a company in the world that when the CHRO walks in, the CEO puts her pen down and says, "What do you have to tell me?" Because it's important. And if they're going to come in and say, our vesting date, I think we might have missed a beat, or the withholding is off, or people want to know if they're going to get their 401(k) matching this year, stuff matters, and everyone looks at it. So of course, a happy stock plan administration relationship is something that the CEO wants to hear when we start talking about things like wellness, retirement. So that is one element of it. But then there's another element of it. One of the senior managers, executives of the firm, myself included, has a meeting with you, you're the CEO of a large cap company, and you are a big client of our stock plan administration. And I say, "How is it going?" You say, "It's going good. You guys are doing a good job." I say, "Listen, that M&A situation that we're kind of struggling on, I know you don't love the banker, but let's have another meeting." Everything is church and state. But let's have a conversation about we're doing well by you in stock plan administration. Let's give the banker another shot at representing. And if the banker can hack, then the banker can hack it. Now we are always mindful of church and state invest x on all of the products. But then instead of walking in, as we often do, and say, the CEO, inevitably, can I have some banking business because it's the highest margin business in town still. It started with something that's near and dear to her heart, which is the stock plan administration working. And now when the bankers see that happening, the bankers go in and they're pitching it. You don't need to offer them bounties because it's something where we have escape velocity, 50% share, and we're good at it. And it's a mandate business, and you can model it and put an earnings multiple on it. So this is -- it's one example. I went into that rabbit hole, but it's one example of the integrated firm having enormous platform power with the existing employees. So that the Senior Managing Directors in Investment Banking know about Workplace and why. And I -- listen, I've done some meetings where I did an investor meeting and I said, "What are you thinking?" Person raised her hands and said, "Listen, I got to tell you, I have your Solium, Morgan Stanley at Work, and it's a good product. But no FA ever called me. You give me a story about evolution, and I've had some big investing events." And I said, "Okay, thanks for your feedback. By the end of the day, I'm going to give you 1 of 2 reasons why that is." One, we dropped the ball, in which case, we got to fix it. Or two, maybe you're firm. Because you guys are very financially literate, as effectively as professional institutional investors, not effectively actually, maybe you ask that FAs not beyond seen because it's not a great use of their time, and you kind of know more than 99-plus percent. And 3 hours later, I have a full response. The request was made, "Do you want the FAs?" "No, we don't. We're good as is." So it is clearly something that is on everyone's mind. And again, I would just emphasize, in a world where we are all going to, even as private companies, own stock in the entity as a way to kind of make up for the shortfall in the confiscatory deficit-driven world we're in, it's going to be part of your wellness retirement outcome, a real one, wherefor savings will effectively have you in that game. And again, it's right in line with the strategy, manage -- raise, manage and allocate capital. So I love it, and I love it for the fact that it's explainable and that there's more to do, and then it brings the entire Managing Director group together. And there are many examples, but I thought I'd give you that one as sort of one that's front and center for me.

Well, I love the color. It's really great to be able to have a tangible example so that people can understand what you mean when you say Workplace and how does it work in an integrated firm. So thank you for that detail. I'm going to shift gears a little bit and ask about how you're thinking about...

Well, I could do another 5 minutes, but I won't -- I won't do that to you.

No, that's okay. We can always come back to it if we run out of questions.

I'm going to find another way to get back at.

Okay. The question we have -- the question I have right now is just where do you see us -- where do you feel we are in this cycle? And are you as bullish as you were on the last earnings call? Just taking it up a notch from deep integration to high level.

Your question is a good one. I'm sort of -- I'm interested at how folks just have a view on cycles because we're in an unusual place, and I have spoken of this a bit. So now I'll go big picture. Those like you, who I had spent time with, know that I talked about the 2 major themes of our time: the end of financial repression and the end of the end of history. I've talked about this for a couple of years, and I'm quite confident this is the reality of where we are. The end of financial repression, of course, is the end of 15 years of 0 rates and 0 inflation and that the transition for the global economy, especially coming out of the asynchronous reality of COVID and the political pressure that, that brings. And the hot/cold element would mean that, that transition would take time, and that it wouldn't be surprising if cash was a strategic asset for investors longer than we think. And we're 2.5 years in, and we're still debating hot and cold prints, right? And I don't know that we're going to be in a rate cycle, whether we're going to do 0, 1 or 2, they're going to be -- they're going to take it slow. So the end of financial repression brings all kinds of new calculus, has people dusting off models from when the weighted average cost of capital is 8% to 10% or 12% versus the financialization last 15 years, where the cost of capital was 0 or negative, real rates. So the end of financial repression, its implications for investors and for the Institutional community that we serve. The end of the end of history is just going back to the Fukuyama piece that he wrote in '89 at the time of the Berlin Wall and sort of said the great ideological battles of our time are effectively won and just sort of broad brush laissez-faire. Let's carve up the winnings amongst the winners and all will be good. It turns out that's not the case. We, of course, have 2 wars again. And it's clear, at least to me, that the exception to history was the period from the end of the second world war until basically when he wrote the piece, which is the fall of the Berlin Wall, and things have been simmering. And we're back to the continuation of history to say, "Why am I going on that vector?" Because our job and our highest value add is in the intersection of those 2 phenomena. The end of financial repression and the end of the end of history have enormous implications for whether companies need to slow burn deglobalization or get on with it. What is a NATO counterparty? But what do I do if the sovereign country risk, for the first time I have to look at [ Barry's ], 400 basis points and all that we're seeing unfold. That is where the energy of the integrated firm can be brought together, again, to help our clients raise manage and allocate capital. And that it can be done now in a world that is something new, the new era. So for me, it's not so much kind of a bull/bear classic. Rates go to the 100-year average of 5%, then they declined to 2%, and we just sort of do the normal macro theory that we study in school. I think it's now something different, and I think it's lasting. And I think it's lasting in our business. It means we have to really have our risk management heads on a swivel. It means we need to think very almost ruthlessly about where we're spending time geographically. Why are you in Abu Dhabi? Why are you in Tokyo versus other places where you just sort of spread that geography? And then what products we're going to be good at and where we can inure the rentals, the high-margin product for a cross-border merger? That is a game-changer because of the intersection of these 2 themes. So that's kind of the way I think about this change in cycle with a capital C. I don't think there's any reason to believe it's possible. Anything is possible, but I think it's highly unlikely that we return to financial repression soon. Even the Japanese off the 0 barrier, inflation is being created even in Japan, and that we're going to suddenly have a resumption at the end of end of history. I don't think either of those are going to happen, so we should focus on the client coverage, product and service and strategic implications of those 2 coming together.

So what I'm hearing, tell me if this is the right takeaway, is that the opportunity set could be higher for longer.

It's good for business. We'll be printing tickets. There'll be times when we'll be so risk-off that nothing can happen. God forbid. In the case of the latter, and perhaps because we got really hot or really cold for a moment. But even there, you're going to transact because you're helping intermediaries and folks in the ecosystem market make or make many hedging bets to secure their firm, their enterprise. But I do think it's really good for our business because we have spent so much time refining the strategy. We know we don't do unsecured credit in emerging markets. Credit cards through a loan cycle, these are great businesses, but we know we do. That's what -- that's so important, the discipline of what James crystallized, and I am very much focused on making sure we'd do that, right? Raise, manage, allocate capital across the integrated firm for whom and where, which private equity sponsors, where in private credit, where in energy transition? And they all -- people say, "Well, but what's -- give me the big picture and the big picture of those 2 themes and the financial repression and the end of the end of history."

Excellent. Well, that was very clear and helpful in understanding how you're thinking about the forward look on the firm over the next several years.

I'm sure that's -- I'm sure most of the group is not -- there's -- I have to hope there's a political science professor in the middle, where he's saying, "Okay, good, good, good. Value [indiscernible] education.

There you go. So with that, I do want to just dig in a little bit to each of the business lines, Wealth Management, Investment Management, Institutional Securities. We talked a bit about Wealth Management already. But the pointed question here is around the growth drivers in Wealth Management. To hit that client asset goal that Morgan Stanley has, can you talk a little bit about what you see within Wealth Management are the key drivers? Is there any white space to go after? Is it taking what is existing and hitting the growth, like you've already just mentioned previously in Workplace?

Nobody does this better than you do. And I'm very appreciative because you let me get back to Wealth and Workplace. So as I was saying for a while, $500 billion of vested and $500 billion unvested, that's $1 trillion of a $2 trillion market, but there's more. Of the $500 billion and $500 billion that we have, there's $5 trillion of wealth held by those same people who work at company X, Y, Z, whose comp plan we administer. That's what's exciting. The TAMs for adjacencies where we're already locked in, so your E*TRADE experience was excellent. Your upgrade to the advisor is excellent. You're a new manager, and you've got all kinds of pressures. But actually, this is not the first time you had any wealth because you have a small account at competitor X or Y. Well, your wealth manager does a great job. And so the client, she's excited and she says, "Well, maybe I should take some of that kind of beta and get it over to my wealth manager." $5 trillion there alone. I'll give you another one. OCIO, outsourced CIO. The way we thought about that, Andy and I and the teams under working with Jessica Zoob inside of Fund Services, is let's take our fund administration product that we use for alternative asset managers, hedge funds that they really like. We're a market leader in that space. Really the last of the major firms to have that, as you know, inside of equities. A big winner for Alan Thomas and Gokul Laroia. Let's try to graft that on to our growing OCIO business in wealth. Now we have $80 billion of administration and OCIO product to full fees, which, of course, is like a lens into the very wealthy retired asset manager who wants to see the same kind of NAV calculations and field documentation feel when they were running a hedge fund. There's another $40 billion in Investment Management. Andy and Jacques Chappuis and Ben Huneke working with Jed Finn running Wealth, they're bringing those products together, the 80 plus the 40. So that's an enormous growth driver, again, the integrated firm. Family institutions and ultra-high net worth, it's a competitive space. But again, we have something that is differentiated. Why? Because again, we're not drawing these distinctions between you're an institutional person, you're a wealth person. The most wealthy people in the world are walking institutions. The concept of an individual doesn't really apply when there are many, many billions. They're an institution. So they expect to be covered that way. So the key is to have world-class architecture inside of wealth so that they can effectively service like an institution. And that the institutional community knows that they enter some of the gains when they themselves go buy and sell companies, which they do. So the entire cosmetic around who's what has changed in a way that's favorable to us, especially when the teams are constantly communicating.

And is there anything in lending that is interesting to you? I know -- or I believe that the vast majority of lending and wealth is residential mortgage related. Is there any interest in expanding beyond that?

That's a great question, and there's more to do. We're at roughly 16% penetration in households. Most of our top competitors are 20-plus. We have been relatively paced on that. We want to be in our lane through classic economic cycles. But as deposits grow, which they will continue to grow, loans will grow. Tailored lending, curated bespoke lending for ultra-high net worth. That's a business that if you're the trusted advisor and someone wants to get a customized or curated loan on a particular portfolio, we're going to be in that business. As James like to say, we're lending wealthy people their money back. That's quite a different conversation than kind of the diversification or lack thereof of FICO scores. So I find that to be exciting. And as you know, we have a great securitized products group inside of Fixed Income run by Jay Hallik with his partner, Jakob Hørder, that has done a ton of the risk transfer trades even coming out of March of last year. We were in the middle of those. So they understand structural subordination. They understand terms and conditions of lending in a sophisticated way. And the application of their intellectual capital to the wealth business, now that's really coming together. So very exciting. So over time, I think it will grow, but we're not in too much of a rush because the cycle isn't necessarily deposit gathering right now, but it will be when rates, at some point, come to a level, and we're just going to continue to grow along. And then with that, you make loans off that deposit base.

And how important is technology as a differentiator in gathering assets, retaining clients, improving efficiencies. Is that in the [indiscernible]? Is that something that's...

Well, it's really important. I mean there's a cost element and then there's a productivity element. And the cost element is one that we're working through every time we're putting a budget together. And we're looking at the reality of what it takes to run a global securities business. And here, size becomes a real advantage because you can afford to get ahead of cyber scenarios and bad actors and state-of-the-art surveilling. And you can think about the efficiencies associated with using AI to break down some of the classic infrastructure controls. So that as long as there are high-quality eyes on top of the technology development, you could be in a cycle where you're beginning to be able to process more faster through the pipes. Knowing that you're going to have AI is something that will, over time, relieve some of the SG&A pressure. I mean that's just a reality of the thing at the federal level, and it's something that we've been focused on for years and continue to grind through as the infrastructure and the business unit look at the whole income statement. And part of the issue becomes, as you've heard me talk about, if you just have some folks looking at revenues and some folks looking at expenses, which sometimes happens at these global investment banks. Well, then, how do you think about educating people on what is sort of on-the-run savings and how that can help create operating leverage, which allows the business units to reinvest in their business? That's something we are really on. And our CFO, Sharon Yeshaya, has been all over that, spending time now in the '25 budget versus waiting until the fall, which is classically, "Let's see how the year goes and then we'll worry about it." No. Let's think about what our federal cost base is going to look like. How much AI is going to be J-curve? How much is going to be on the run? Working with Katy Huberty and others in research, so think about how this efficiency would work. Now if I go into the 2 segments, I mean, investment banking is going to be at the heart of a lot of this interesting development around AI. Utilities clients are buyers and suppliers of power, communications clients, obviously, our owners are lessors of towers. The real estate team is obviously focused on where in the power structure and the grid they have basically the acreage. And then in technology, bankers will be buyers and sellers of the folks that have the chips or don't. And then there are the AI companies themselves that have to get financed and go public. So there's an enormous flywheel of activity. And then, again, the integrated firm is -- but what does a large-scale technology -- if you ask Dan what is a simple, it's what a large-scale technology company or a hyperscaler, what are they thinking about right now? What they're thinking about is access to power. And so linking them to the commodities folks, again, in a classic organizational structure, you would not have the C-suite investment banker connecting the commodities group into each other. But that works at our place because there is a history of trust and rigor and understanding of walls. And so that's pretty exciting that you could have CEO of company X, Y, Z mega, mega cap, be on the phone with the head of a particular segment from commodities pretty quickly to get stuff done. So that, over time, then starts bleeding into productivity, right? Because now the bankers are able to access different parts of the firm for their clients. In the Wealth business, it's even more, I think, of a game changer, actually. We have products that we're unrolling right now under sort of the banner of AIMS, AI at Morgan Stanley. And let me give you an example of an AIMS product. We have our meeting, classic Wealth Management client, client has some angst about this or that topic. We go through a laundry list of stuff. Well, it's almost like CRM evolved inside of Wealth, wherein the conversation effectively gets not only transcribed, but then categorized by topic. And then imagine we have these conversations 3, 4 times a year, and these are the things that tend to come up. And when they come up, and there's an election coming or there may be tax issues and estate planning and life issues with the client, so then you can more exactly go point to point in a conversation with the client saying, listen, we haven't gotten to this yet. But we talked 2 meetings ago about this, and take a look at your mail, I'm sending a PDF. Here's kind of how we should really start executing on [indiscernible] because we've been talking about that for a while or state generation state tax thinking. And so that use of the FAs time because, again, the human becomes the governing limitation. The use of technology with these top FAs around it is quite amazing. And then, of course, you just can use your imagination, thinking ahead, what if we all knew what certain conversations would be based on what we think will happen in November, right? How can then the FAs, based on not only what they've observed in the marketplace, but based on conversations that I've had with that person or other conversations that are happening contemporaneously, can be used to get the most effective product and service to the client. So I think it's -- some of it, obviously, as I kind of described it as amorphous, but some of it is, "Oh, gosh, this is potentially really game changing." And so we're doing this at pace, but the MS Debrief, as part of this AIMS, is a first step. And that, alone, just the effectively retranscribing of the meeting and putting it in nice CRM form saves the FA 10 to 15 hours a week. I mean that's an enormous productivity quantum and that's not even getting to anticipating what might be the right conversation to have. So again, extraordinarily exciting.

Great. We have 3 more topics to hit in 6 minutes. So I'll see what I can do to work through it. We talked a lot about Wealth and quite a bit about the opportunities in ISG. What about Investment Management? Can you talk us through the drivers of what you're looking for from Investment Management division to hit that client asset goal as well?

Yes. I think the team running Investment Management, Jacques Chappuis, who helped turn around Investment Management under Simkowitz, and now Ben Huneke, who came over from Wealth, they're doing a great job, and they're working with 10-, 20-year plans in mind. So we've been building private equity and private credit capabilities. We've been building a real estate capability. We suffered 15, 16 years ago. But John Klopp, Lauren Hochfelder, they say, we're going to win. We've got LPs that still want to own Morgan Stanley real estate investments, and they've done an unbelievable job, performance and asset growth. So we're there in private credit and private equity. But we're not overly indexed to that, but it's clearly a growth area, and I'm balanced about it. Real assets, though, exciting. Real estate, important. And then we have some world-class money managers that are inside of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, and more than ever, it's integrated into Wealth Management. And the evidence of that is, in this extraordinary acquisition of Eaton Vance, we've got this Parametric product, which, the psych guys took course, will be back to the 2 major themes: tax management and that Parametric product is now being. Again, use of AI, democratized at a speed that people wouldn't have anticipated so that -- a couple of years ago, there was a certain minimum. Now we're all going to be able to avail ourselves of some of the vanilla, but not vanilla because they have the special sauce, tax sauce harvesting product and then customize it to sophisticated clients. So the IM segment, I think, is one that is being nurtured. It's being grown, and it's been growing in the context of the integrated firm. If you go to Italy, for example, we have a world-class Investment Banking business in Italy, but we also have some of our most committed, long-term LPs in Investment Management. So kind of connecting those dots is, I think, really important.

Great. I do want to ask about your thoughts on excess capital. Now I realize that Basel III end game is not yet finalized, and so no one can put an exact number on how much excess capital there is, so I'm not going to ask you how much you have. But I do want to know how you think about -- once all these rules are out and everybody knows what the number is for themselves, how do you think about utilizing it?

Right. Well, we -- as you know, we've been extraordinarily disciplined on capital. I think, again, this is part of the roots of strategy and culture coming out of those many years ago and allowed us to pursue the acquisitions when we saw something that was interesting, inorganic and sized. And we've been stewards of that capital. You'll see we're disciplined about G-SIB buckets just to get in the weeds of use of capital. Our CET1 ratio has been roughly 15% for a bunch of quarters on end. And our -- pre the CCAR results, our capital needs have been around 13%, so 15%, minus 13%, there it is. Now CCAR test's coming, we'll see how everyone does on that. And then Basel III end game, which, I think, our approach has been one of we have a view, but we've been respectful and we've been data-driven. A lot of data to the great and the good on things like ops risk and the like. And they're taking time to come up with something that makes sense. And I think taking time for something like this is really important. I'm a dividend guy. As you know, I'm a dividend guy. I really care about the dividend. As a stockholder, and at this point of my life, I really care about the dividend. I get excited when the dividend gets x and then it comes in. I love that, okay? And that's not a true real thing for me. I think it is emblematic of our strength, of our stability, of the raison d'être of going from price to book to price to earnings when you model out the firm, when you're looking at over 10, 20 years, dividend, dividend, dividend. And so that's sacrosanct. Needs of the business to invest. Obviously, things are going well in Institutional Securities. There are places where we can and will do more. I neglected to mention just as a sense of how we take the Global Investment Bank seriously, a bunch of place where we're not doing business because it's just not where we can have competitive edge. But if -- you might be interested to know the 2 offices we're opening this year are in Copenhagen and Abu Dhabi. Copenhagen, because we have real strength across the markets business and banking in the Nordic region. And Abu Dhabi, because the Middle East is going to be important for a long time. James and Dan were there last week. So that is an example of we're going to be intentional where we're investing back in the business. And I think there will be investing needs to some of this AI product I'm talking about in Wealth, which is why I'm not in a rush to get to 30% and then say, "Oh, we got to 30%, let's declare victory." I want this thing to be grown durably, consistently over time, which means if we're really looking at this over the next 10 years, we want to continue to invest in the business. With respect to the buyback, the buyback, I like the use of the buyback because if we have excess capital at some level, there is a real option to return it to shareholders, and we've done that. The idea has been to pay out the Wealth and Investment Management business in the form of the dividend. If there's excess beyond that, we're not shy about buying stock back, as you know. But as a markets guy, as we all are, where the stock trades matters. I'm happy to think we got a ton of runway. So I have to also toggle in my own head something that feels like a predictable cadence. I think people that own the stock over 5, 10, 20 years, they like cadence, they like consistency. They like, I don't want to say boring, but durability. And so the levers can be moved a bit, but I kind of think about it as moving the dial 10, 20 degrees.

Well, thank you so much, Ted, for all of that. I think it was a super reflection and helpful for everyone to understand how you think through all the various issues and opportunities that Morgan Stanley has.

I want to say just one last thing, Betsy, which is, it's a real honor to be here. But you and I have -- we've known each other forever, and your Career at Morgan Stanley partner, and we've -- this has been our second life at the firm. And it's a great thrill to be here with you, particularly, Betsy. So thank you so much.

Well, thank you, Ted.