Morgan Stanley profit sinks 30% under coronavirus pressure
Investment bank is largely sitting out the goverment's small-business emergency lending program
Get all the latest news on coronavirus and more delivered daily to your inbox. Sign up here.
Morgan Stanley’s profit fell 30% in the first quarter, the last big U.S. bank to lurch through a period of stress wrought by the coronavirus.
The Wall Street firm reported a quarterly profit of $1.7 billion, or $1.01 a share, on revenue of $9.49 billion. Both figures were down from a year ago.
The results fell just shy of projections by stock analysts, who had revised their estimates downward as the coronavirus pummeled the markets and the U.S. economy. Analysts polled by FactSet expected $1.16 a share, or $1.89 billion, of profit on $9.85 billion of revenue.
GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE
Morgan Stanley is the smallest of the six major U.S. banks with few true peers in the bunch, which has left some investors unsure how it will fare in a coronavirus downturn.
Its Wall Street businesses are roughly the same size as Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s, but its giant wealth-management arm tracks more closely with Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit.
Stocks In This Article:
It doesn’t have a credit-card arm, where JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. are steeling for a wave of defaults, and is largely sitting out the government’s small-business emergency lending program.
BANK OF AMERICA JOINS RIVALS WITH $3.6B BUFFER FROM CORONAVIRUS LOAN DEFAULTS
Morgan Stanley’s 61-year-old chief executive, James Gorman, spent more than a week in March sickened with the coronavirus, showing the disease’s fever and chills though none of its deadly respiratory symptoms.
MORGAN STANLEY WARNS OF MORE CORONAVIRUS PAIN AHEAD
The quarter challenged U.S. megabanks in ways unseen since the financial crisis of 2008. They contended with falling interest rates and wildly swinging asset prices, sorted through unprecedented government intervention in the financial markets, and steeled themselves for a lengthy recession.