According to informed sources, Wall Street investment banking giant Morgan Stanley has laid off 2,500 employees across all its departments. The job cuts are reported to have affected staff in the bank's three main divisions: Investment Banking and Trading, Wealth Management, and Investment Management.
Although Morgan Stanley began announcing the layoffs last week, a significant number of the terminations were executed on Wednesday. As of December 31, the bank employed 82,992 people globally. Based on this figure, the recent layoffs represent approximately 3% of its total workforce.
Morgan Stanley reported strong performance for 2025, with annual revenue reaching a record high. The company's fourth-quarter profit, announced in January, also surpassed Wall Street expectations, driven primarily by a 47% surge in investment banking revenue, a jump in trading volume, and a near-doubling of income from debt underwriting fees.
Bank executives are optimistic about 2026, given a robust pipeline of mergers and acquisitions and initial public offering (IPO) projects. Concurrently, trading division volumes have continued to grow as clients adjust their investment portfolios to hedge against risks amid heightened market volatility, fueled by concerns that artificial intelligence could disrupt traditional tech firms and ongoing geopolitical unrest.
Sources indicated that this round of cuts at Morgan Stanley involved private bankers and back-office personnel within the wealth management division. It was further noted that some of the affected employees were responsible for issuing mortgages to wealth management clients.
More broadly, a wave of significant layoffs has swept across industries since the start of the year, as U.S. companies streamline operations amidst the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence tools. In a related move late last month, payment company Block, led by Jack Dorsey, announced it was cutting over 4,000 jobs, nearly half of its workforce, as part of a comprehensive overhaul to integrate AI into its operations.
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