Morgan Stanley makes big push into mortgage originations

Morgan Stanley plans to bring its mortgage origination business in-house, as the bank ramps up the business to create a bigger presence in the mortgage market.

According to the Reuters article by Olivia Oran, Morgan Stanley wants to bring the business in-house to improve customer service and generate more mortgages, citing two people familiar with the matter.

“Morgan Stanley executives hope that handling originations in-house will smooth out the process and give the bank a chance to market other products and services to wealthy clients,” the article stated.

Before bringing the business in-house, Morgan Stanley used PHH Corp. as a third-party provider for its originations.

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[Video] Morgan Stanley CEO: “Not a fan of getting rid of Dodd-Frank”

Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman defended Dodd-Frank in an interview with CNBC on Thursday, weighing in on the uncertain future of the act under the incoming Trump administration.

“Let me be very clear about this, I am not a fan of getting rid of Dodd-Frank,” Stanley told CNBC.

However, he continued, “There are elements of Dodd-Frank that clearly need to be curtailed.”

Shortly after winning the election, President-elect Donald Trump’s transition teamposted his plans for the first days in office, which included his plan to “dismantle” the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.

The website calls Dodd-Frank a “sprawling and complex piece of legislation that has unleashed hundreds of new rules and several new bureaucratic agencies,” including theConsumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Not too long after Trump’s team announced their plans, Trump’s U.S. Treasury Secretary nominee Steve Mnuchin also gave his thoughts on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act in an interview with CNBC.

During the interview, Mnuchin said, “The No. 1 problem with Dodd-Frank is it is way too complicated and it cuts back lending.”

“We want to strip back parts of Dodd-Frank that prevent banks from lending and that will be the No. 1 priority on the regulatory side,” he told CNBC.

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Morgan Stanley promotes second exec with link to fishy loans

Morgan Stanley has promoted a second executive linked to a questionable sales contest that pushed risky loans on its customers, The Post has learned.

Eric Maiuri, a Boston-area vice president who pushed the sales contest on colleagues, was recently named an associate regional manager, one source said.

He’s taken over responsibilities from Jason Frank, who oversaw the sales contest that sparked at least two investigations.

Frank still works at the bank as a loan specialist for wealthy customers, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Morgan Stanley is being investigated by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and Massachussetts’ top securities regulator for the questionable loan sales, which allegedly put the bank’s interests before its customers.

The Post first reported on the sales contests and the “Glengarry Glen Ross” culture that came with it.

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Morgan Stanley accused in lawsuit of mismanaging its 401(k) retirement savings plan

Even Wall Street workers are unhappy with how their retirement plans are run.

A participant in Morgan Stanley’s 401(k) plan filed a lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court in New York alleging that it offers investment options that have too-high fees and poor track records, including some mutual funds run by Morgan Stanley itself. The suit accuses the $8 billion plan of causing “hundreds of millions of dollars” in losses for its roughly 60,000 participants.

Morgan Stanley declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Friday’s suit is the latest in a lengthening string of complaints about high fees and poor investment choices at 401(k) and 403(b) retirement plans around the country. Franklin Templeton’s 401(k) plan was hit with a similar suit last month, for example. Participants filed suits against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University and Yale University earlier this month.

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Morgan Stanley takes first steps in offering $400M in consumer relief in New York

Earlier this year, Morgan Stanley agreed to a $3.2 billion settlement over its “deceptive” mortgage bond practices in the run-up to the financial crisis.

Part of that settlement included a commitment to provide $400 million in consumer relief for New York residents affected by Morgan Stanley’s alleged actions, set to be distributed by the end of September 2019.

Now, Morgan Stanley is taking its first steps to fulfill that commitment, by providing principal forgiveness to a handful of borrowers as a “test drive” of its relief plan, according to a new report from Eric Green, the independent monitor of the consumer-relief portion of the settlement.

The settlement stems from Morgan Stanley’s alleged misrepresentations about the security and safety of residential mortgage-backed securities it sold before the financial crisis.

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Top state regulator to probe Morgan Stanley loan sales

James Gorman is about to feel some pain in Massachusetts.

William Galvin, the Bay State’s top securities regulator, has launched an investigation of Gorman’s Morgan Stanley and its alleged loan sales contests,which posed apparent conflicts of interest with clients, The Post has learned.

Gorman’s bank created a pilot program that divided financial advisers into “teams” and offered them financial incentives for selling securities-based loans — an apparent regulatory no-no because it could benefit the broker more than the client, The Post first reported in March.

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$511M RMBS Suit Against Morgan Stanley Largely Survives

Law360, Los Angeles (June 22, 2016, 11:15 PM ET) — A trio of Morgan Stanley units will have to face a slew of claims in a lawsuit over allegedly defective loans underlying more than $511 million in residential mortgage-backed securities after a New York judge upheld the bulk of an investor’s claims.

New York state court Judge Marcy Friedman trimmed away portions of Wilmington Trust Co.’s breach of contract claims related to Morgan Stanley’s alleged failure to to repurchase defective loans and a claim for indemnification of attorneys’ fees against a credit card unit, but kept…

Source: Law360

Morgan Stanley pays $1 million U.S. SEC fine over stolen customer data

Morgan Stanley has agreed to pay a $1 million fine to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission civil charges that security lapses at the Wall Street bank enabled a former financial adviser to tap into its computers and take client data home, the regulator said on Wednesday.

The settlement resolves allegations related to Galen Marsh’s unauthorized transfers from 2011 to 2014 of data from about 730,000 accounts to his home computer in New Jersey, some of which was hacked by third parties and offered for sale online.

Marsh was sentenced in December to three years probation and ordered to pay $600,000 in restitution after pleading guilty to one felony count of unauthorized access to a computer. Prosecutors had sought prison time.

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Morgan Stanley promotes exec who oversaw controversial sales contest that pushed risky loans on some of its wealthiest customers

Morgan Stanley has promoted an executive who oversaw a questionable sales contest that pushed risky loans on some of its wealthiest customers — even as a Wall Street watchdog is probing the Wall Street firm over the practice.

Lynn Sullivan, an executive director who oversaw a 2014 sales contest to promote the loans in the New England region, was named the head of cash management sales in Purchase, NY.

In March, The Post exclusively reported that the bank had been giving out financial incentives to brokers who sold the most securities-based loans, one of the firm’s biggest money-makers. Regulators look askance at incentivizing employees to sell a specific product.

Sullivan was one of the highest-ranking executives on an e-mail chain obtained by The Post that divided brokers into “teams” and detailed how the bank would pay out thousands of dollars through a pilot program.

The report spurred a probe by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority into the bank’s loan sales practices.

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California AG Files Suit Against Morgan Stanley Over False Claims and Securities Violations

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People of the State of CA v. Morgan Stanley.pdf	33.23 MB

SAN FRANCISCO – Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today filed a lawsuit against investment bank Morgan Stanley for misrepresentations about complex investments such as residential mortgage-backed securities, in which large pools of home loans were packaged together and sold to investors.  These misrepresentations contributed to the global financial crisis and to major losses by investors including California’s public pension funds, which are responsible for the retirement security of California peace officers, firefighters, teachers, and other public employees.

The complaint, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, alleges that Morgan Stanley violated the False Claims Act, the California Securities Law and other state laws by concealing or understating the risks of intricate investments involving large numbers of underlying loans or other assets. In addition to residential mortgage-backed securities, the complaint also focuses on “structured investment vehicle” investments, which involved not just packages of residential mortgage loans but also other types of debt of individuals and corporations.

“Morgan Stanley’s conduct in this case evidenced a culture of greed and deception that helped create a devastating economic crisis and crippled California’s budget,” said Attorney General Harris. “This lawsuit is necessary in order to hold Morgan Stanley accountable for the destruction it caused to California, our people, and our pension funds.”

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