Guy Moszkowski Quotations

We've anticipated some of that. There is going to be some uncertainty again surrounding when the equity underwriting calendar's going to look better and all the other businesses.

It basically allows them to internally cross more of their Nasdaq volume. It takes the number of stocks that they can make markets in on the Nasdaq up over 6,000 from 300 or so stocks they do now.

Results were extremely strong in almost every category, with particular strength in fixed income and equity trading, each producing well over $400 million more than we had forecast in revenue, for a total trading 'surprise' of $1BB in revenue.

Merrill, relative to its historical valuations at this stage of the cycle, is quite cheap. And (the company) will of course enjoy some recovery probably over the next few weeks as it has in the last week, as worries about the interest rate environment subside.

Mergers and acquisitions have been very strong and produced a lot of ancillary financing.

Trends look very strong for fixed income, with investment grade issuance up strongly and high yield issuance levels performing well. Equity underwriting has been more mixed in the first quarter, but remains very strong, especially in the U.S., and backlogs have been building.

Unlike in the past, it can't acquire its way out of the growth slowdown.

Warburg has been taken by surprise by the strength of Morgan Stanley, Merrill and Goldman in M&A underwriting in Europe.

To think they're immune would be very imprudent, and I'm sure they'd be the first to agree with me on that. But from everything I can infer, the second quarter is starting out just as strong as the first, and they manage their risk very well. Earnings growth could contract quite a bit if things get bad, but they're well protected from severe loss in most any market environment.

The recent moves to eliminate the worst-performing 10 percent of brokers and rein in the training program are a good start to improving margins. But these are just the first steps.

As this problem is unlikely to resolve itself quickly, we remain concerned that 2006 forecasts could be too aggressive.

Strategically, it's been very, very difficult for PaineWebber to gain or maintain share in anything other than its main retail business, ... What they probably hope is by getting together with a more global firm that they can turn that around.

The miss appears to be weakness in the trading portion of the Investment Bank unit, a frequent culprit due to its excessive volatility versus peers.

They really have built a very impressive investment-banking capability. They won't always be No.1, but they clearly have been effective in merging their investment and commercial banks.

Asset management remains the highest quality revenue stream and the highest return-on-equity revenue stream in the financial-services business.

The U.S. origination business may be slowing while it is growing in other markets.

In terms of investment banking, in terms of capital markets, in terms of investment management, really everything was very positive. Their outlook statement was also quite positive: their backlogs are up compared to where they were last year and they expect to be able to continue to pick up market share.

I am not a big proponent of the diversified model. It is extremely hard to manage, and I just think there is a lot of value to be had from focusing on a few things really well. The turnaround process at Morgan Stanley will take some time.