Morgan Stanley and Citi will have to wait up to two years to gain the full benefit of their $14 billion-a-year brokerage joint venture as the complexity of merging information technology systems delays integration, the Financial Times reported, quoting unnamed sources.

The IT issues are frustrating some of the new business’ 18,500 financial advisors, who had expected to be able to sell a full suite of products from both Morgan Stanley and Citi to their wealthy clients, the FT said, citing people close to the situation.

The joint venture between Citi’s Smith Barney unit and Morgan Stanley’s brokerage business will create one of the biggest such businesses, rivalling that of Merrill Lynch, now owned by Bank of America.

The report said some bankers have also been disappointed as they had hoped to tap the army of brokers – the largest in the US – to distribute bond and equity issues to high-end retail investors.

Morgan Stanley has paid $2.75 billion for a 51 per cent stake in the venture with Citi’s Smith Barney unit. When the deal was completed on 1 June, the two companies stressed the benefits of the combined salesforce and said the venture would have revenues of about $14 billion a year.

But the difficulties of integrating IT systems will mean that Morgan Stanley’s financial advisors will not be able to access products from Citi’s capital markets business, and vice-versa, for months, the publication added.