(Bloomberg) -- Morgan Stanley promoted 173 employees to managing director, the firm’s top rank.
The new entrants to the club represent a 12% jump over last year, but still lower than in each of the two years before that. That marked a break from the trend for bigger boosts seen at rivals.
The biggest US banks have been bulking up the number of new entrants to their highest ranks, reflecting the strong performance for the companies in recent years as well as expectations for more robust business ahead. The largest Wall Street firms have all outperformed gains for broader stock gauges, with Morgan Stanley returning 40% last year.
Rival Goldman Sachs Group Inc. added the biggest number of executives to its prestigious partner rank since 2010, when it elevated 95 in November. At Citigroup Inc., the class of new managing directors was one of its largest ever and the batch at Bank of America Corp. represented the most in recent years.
At Morgan Stanley, 2024 marked Ted Pick’s first full year at the helm of the firm and the restrained size of its new MDs likely reflects his desire to keep the firm’s top rank a little more selective even as he contends with industrywide pressure to retain moneymakers across its ranks.
A Morgan Stanley spokesperson confirmed the promotions.
For this year’s class:
- With the new additions, women will make up 27% of the firm’s total MD ranks.
- Only 3% of the promotions in the US this year were Black.
- The investment bank represented the biggest share of new additions, with about 46% of new MDs from the firm’s institutional securities group.
- On average, the executives who made it to MD this year have spent about 11 years at Morgan Stanley.
- In 2023, the firm added 184 MDs, following 199 in 2022.
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