Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley is "wide awake" to potential M&A opportunities, CEO Ted Pick said on Tuesday, as regulators take a more accommodating stance toward bank deals.
Several large banks have expressed interest in acquisitions to bolster their competitive positions, modernize their technology and expand in fast-growing areas such as wealth management and payments.
During the bank's flagship U.S. investor conference on Tuesday, Pick said Morgan Stanley is "keeping an eye" on M&A activity in the sector as U.S. regulators have shown greater willingness to approve deals.
"...There could be some M&A activity in the space, and we want to be wide awake to that," Pick said.
Pick pointed to wealth management and asset management as potential areas where the bank could explore opportunities for inorganic growth.
The bank agreed to acquire private shares platform EquityZen last year, but its biggest acquisition prior to that was the $7 billion purchase of investment management firm Eaton Vance in 2021.
"M&A in this industry is really challenging and we want to get it right," Pick added.
Last month, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said his company could put $10 billion to $20 billion into M&A opportunities in the next couple of years.
Investment banking wave
Investment bankers are enjoying their strongest environment in years as marquee IPOs and multibillion-dollar acquisitions revive a business that had been constrained by higher borrowing costs, market volatility and regulatory uncertainty.
With stock indexes buoyant and corporate confidence steady, executives have increasingly turned to public markets and transformational deals to fund growth.
Morgan Stanley is one of the lead underwriters in the $75 billion SpaceX IPO, the largest in history, expected to debut on Friday.
The bank had a strong first quarter, with investment banking revenue rising 36%, led mainly by M&A advisory.
Volatility sparked by the Iran war gave the bank record equities trading revenue. Its mainstay institutional securities business posted revenue of $10.7 billion, up 19% from a year earlier.
"I think it's fair to say that the securities business, investment banking and markets across the integrated firm is really humming right now," Pick said.
(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru and Saeed Azhar and Tatiana Bautzer in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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