Two national-level sales executives prompted �to pursue other opportunities�. James Gorman, president and COO of Morgan Stanley�s retail brokerage business, has also taken over national sales, eliminating a report level between himself and the firm�s 9,500-strong registered rep force.

As a result Morgan Stanley's director of national sales Michael Burke, and the head of its regional divisions Rick Sanchez have left the firm �to pursue other opportunities,� according to an internal memo to Morgan Stanley�s brokers sent out late last week.

West, Midwest, Northeast and Southeast

Gorman has been with Morgan Stanley for about six weeks, though his appointment - which came a few weeks after Merrill apparently dead-ended him with a new job having to do with scoping out potential acquisition targets - was made public last August.

�I will provide personal, direct leadership to our 9,526 financial advisors,� Gorman says in the memo. �I believe by focusing on the client-facing end of our business, I will help ensure that we have the right structure in place to achieve our aspirations and stated goals.�

Among those stated goals is a turnaround for Morgan Stanley�s flailing retail brokerage, for which the firm � to judge from its latest annual report � is relying heavily on Gorman, the former head of Merrill Lynch�s retail brokerage business.

Gorman also said in last week�s memo that he has cut Morgan Stanley�s eight sales regions to four and put two former Merrill colleagues at the head of two of them.

New Midwest region head Jerry Miller, was COO of a group within Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (which Merrill Plans to sell to BlackRock); Northeast region head Richard Skae ran Merrill's New York City sales region.

Margaret Black, the pre-Gorman era head of Morgan Stanley�s Southern California region, will lead the firm�s new Western region; Morgan Stanley�s New York region head Bill McMahon will be responsible for the new Southeastern region.

Gorman plans to continue to �bring new talent to our group� over the next little while, with existing Morgan Stanley and outsiders coming into play.

Mark Elzweig of Mark Elzweig & Co., an New York-based retainer search firm for asset managers, says that former Merrill staffers are likely to figure prominently in the new-look Morgan Stanley, if only because Gorman �is likely to turn to people he knows and trusts and feels comfortable with.�

In another development touching Morgan Stanley�s retail business, Ray Harris, whom Morgan Stanley CEO had made acting head of retail brokerage in the seven or eight months it took to find and then transition a fulltime head, will become a vice chairman of Global Wealth Management � Gorman�s newish name Morgan Stanley�s retail brokerage � and divide his time between glad-handing with brokers in various offices around the world and looking at ways to package investment products around retirement-income planning. �FWR

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