(Bloomberg) -- Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer Ted Pick said the biggest trading firms are putting more distance between them and their smaller rivals, after the bank posted the best third-quarter trading gains on Wall Street.
“There is an element of the leaders pulling away from the pack because it costs a lot to run those businesses every year,” Pick said Wednesday in an interview on Bloomberg Television.
The results sparked a rally in the company’s shares, which surged as much as 8.2%, the biggest intraday increase in almost four years. They traded up 7.4% to $120.50 at 10:46 a.m in New York, pushing this year’s gain to 29%.
Pick took over as the CEO in January from longtime chief James Gorman. He rose to the top after the bank had spent the previous decade redefining itself as a wealth-management juggernaut that has sketched out plans to oversee $10 trillion in assets, compared with $7.6 trillion at the end of the third quarter.
Earlier in the day, the bank said it had generated record revenue in its wealth-management unit, which accounts for roughly half the total.
Investors have been more cautious in trusting the bank’s ability to sustain the gains and strength in its money-management business while it fends off slippage in results in its investment bank.
The bank’s stock had lost a step earlier this year, and the company had even fallen behind Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in its market value. It has since rebounded, and once again boasts a market cap that’s jumped in front of its crosstown rival.
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