The wealth management arm of Morgan Stanley has posted a pre-tax income of $736m for the fourth of 2014, an increase of 2.9% compared with $715m a year ago.
For the quarter ended 31 December 2014, the unit’s net revenues were $3.8bn, up 2.7% from $3.7bn a year ago. Pre-tax margin was 19% that included the impact of compensation expense deferral adjustments.
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The division reported asset management fee revenues of $2.1bn, compared to $2bn a year ago driven by market appreciation and positive flows.
During the quarter, transactional revenues dropped to $976m from $1.1bn a year ago.
The wealth management arm registered a net interest income of $625m, an increase from $526m in the same period a year ago.
The unit’s total client assets exceeded $2trn, while client assets in fee based accounts was $785bn, up 13% compared to the prior year quarter.
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By GlobalDataFee based asset flows for the quarter stood at $20.8bn, the banking group said in a statement.
In addition, the number of wealth management representatives declined to 16,076 from 16,456 compared with the prior year quarter.
Morgan Stanley chairman and CEO James Gorman said: "We delivered strong results across several of our businesses, although overall performance was affected by the choppy market conditions of the fourth quarter. Entering 2015, we remain confident about our business mix, market position and the opportunities ahead of us."
