Morgan Stanley nominates ex-UK regulator to its board, boosts executive pay
6:04 pm Friday, April 05th, 2024
By Tatiana Bautzer and Mehnaz Yasmin
(Reuters) – Morgan Stanley nominated former UK financial regulator Megan Butler to its board of directors, the bank said in a filing on Friday.
Butler, 59, previously served as executive director at the UK Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority. Shareholders will vote on director nominees at Morgan Stanley’s virtual annual meeting on May 23.
Morgan Stanley in January agreed to pay $249 million to settle a government investigation into its block trading practices in the fourth quarter.
The bank also on Friday laid out details for executive pay for the shareholder vote, reflecting an average increase of 13% for its top five executives.
The board awarded Executive Chairman James Gorman, who served as CEO until the end of last year, a 17% pay bump to $37 million.
Directors cited Gorman’s “exemplary executive talent development,” which “led to the successful execution of an orderly, multi-year CEO succession planning process that is uncommon in financial services.”
The bank also explained its decision to pay $20 million one-time awards to new CEO Ted Pick, who took the helm at the start of the year, and Co-Presidents Andy Saperstein and Dan Simkowitz “to reinforce the message of collaboration in leadership through the transition.”
Excluding the one-time award, Pick’s compensation for last year stood at $25 million when he ran the bank’s division encompassing investment banking and trading.
Saperstein, who leads wealth and investment management, was awarded $21.5 million. Simkowitz, the former head of investment management who now leads institutional securities, was given $20 million. Finance chief Sharon Yeshaya was awarded $13.5 million.
Morgan Stanley will report first-quarter earnings on April 16.
(Reporting by Mehnaz Yasmin in Bengaluru and Tatiana Bautzer in New York; Editing by Lananh Nguyen, Krishna Chandra Eluri and Matthew Lewis)
