Partners who left J.P. Morgan & Co. and opened down the street in 1935.

Morgan Stanley exists because of a law that split American banking in two. English Wikipedia explains that after Congress passed the Glass–Steagall Act in 1933, a single company could no longer run both investment banking and commercial banking. J.P. Morgan & Co. chose to stay a commercial bank. Some of its people, among them Henry S. Morgan, a grandson of J. P. Morgan, and Harold Stanley, left to form a new investment bank, joined by others from the Drexel partnership.

The firm formally opened for business on 16 September 1935 at 2 Wall Street, just down the street from J.P. Morgan, Wikipedia says. Its name followed the pattern of the old Wall Street partnerships: the surnames of two founders joined by a space, with no ampersand or descriptor. The same two words are the name the firm uses today.

The partnership was reorganised in 1941 to allow more activity in its securities business, the article records. Early mandates put the name in front of industrial clients: Wikipedia says the firm was lead underwriter of a 1938 debenture issue for United States Steel and led the syndicate for a 1939 U.S. rail financing. From 1951 to 1961 the firm was led by Perry Hall, the last of the founders to run it, a period in which it co-managed a 1952 World Bank bond offering and worked on debt and stock offerings for General Motors, IBM and AT&T, the article records. In 1967 it set up Morgan & Cie International in Paris to enter the European securities market and acquired Brooks, Harvey & Co., opening a real estate business, and in 1996 it acquired Van Kampen American Capital. Morgan Stanley credits itself, Wikipedia notes, with building a computer model for financial analysis in 1962, work to which the future chairman Dick Fisher contributed as a young employee.

A long merged name, then two words again.

The name grew longer before it grew short again. In February 1997, English Wikipedia says, Morgan Stanley merged with Dean Witter Discover & Co., the financial services business spun off from Sears, Roebuck. The combined firm took the name Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Discover & Co. Dean Witter’s chairman and chief executive, Philip J. Purcell, kept those roles, and Morgan Stanley’s president, John J. Mack, became president and chief operating officer. The merged firm then expanded overseas, Wikipedia says; in 1999 Mack set up a joint venture in India with the local partner JM Financial. In 1998 the name became Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co.; Wikipedia says the combined name had been chosen to avoid tension between the two predecessor firms.

Dean Witter brought its own history. Registered Rep, the trade magazine now published as WealthManagement.com, noted in May 2001 that Dean Witter dated from 1924, when it opened an office in San Francisco, and merged with the New York firm Reynolds & Co. in 1978.

The same article reported the change that produced today’s identity. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter officially became Morgan Stanley on 2 April 2001, after the firm announced in January that it planned to shorten the name and its board approved dropping “Dean Witter” in March. The chief marketing officer, Phil Raskin, said the new brand name brought the benefit of global recognition. The shortened name was accompanied by a new logo, unveiled on the firm’s website, while for legal purposes the company name stayed Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. at the time, Registered Rep said. The two founding surnames were left to stand alone once more, as they had in 1935.

Insurers, banks and their marks.

American financial brands tend to draw on a small set of visual ideas, and most of them are older than modern advertising. The first is the surname. Many firms in banking, insurance and investment carry the names of the people who started them, and a wordmark built from two family names reads as a signature, a promise that someone stands behind the account. Over time those names are often shortened to initials or a single word, and the letterforms are redrawn to look calm at small sizes on statements, cards and phone screens.

The second idea is the emblem. Eagles, shields, umbrellas and other protective shapes appear again and again because they are easy to read and suggest cover and steadiness without a word of copy. A plain box or square, filled with one strong colour, does similar work for firms that want to look restrained rather than heraldic.

The third idea belongs to advertising rather than the logo. Insurers in particular lean on recurring characters: animated mascots, invented animals and actors who return in campaign after campaign, so that a voice or a face becomes as recognisable as the mark itself. Together, names, emblems and familiar spokespeople give a set of abstract services something people can picture and remember.

From Smith Barney to E-Trade, under one name.

After 2001 the firm added businesses beneath its name. In September 2008, Wikipedia says, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs both announced that they would become bank holding companies regulated by the Federal Reserve, and on 29 September that year Japan’s MUFG Bank bought a direct ownership stake in Morgan Stanley. In January 2009, English Wikipedia says, Morgan Stanley’s Global Wealth Management Group was combined with Citi’s Smith Barney to form Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, a joint venture in which Morgan Stanley held the larger share; in May 2012 it exercised an option to buy more of the venture from Citi. The wealth business now trades as Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, one of three divisions alongside institutional services and investment management.

In October 2009 the firm announced the sale of Van Kampen to Invesco while keeping the Morgan Stanley brand, Wikipedia records. In October 2020 it completed its acquisition of E-Trade, the online brokerage.

The headquarters today is at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, some distance from the 2 Wall Street address of 1935. Wikipedia notes that much of the firm’s earlier office space at the World Trade Center had come with Dean Witter, which had occupied it since the mid-1980s.

For a design guide, Morgan Stanley shows how a merged name can be unwound: two founders’ surnames that were briefly followed by two more were cut back in 2001 to the original pair, with a new logo to mark the change, and later acquisitions were absorbed beneath that pair. Compare Chase, whose octagon dates from 1961, and Wells Fargo, another American financial name with a stagecoach emblem. For this guide we use Broadway blue, navy and pale steel with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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