It was a rare misstep for a manager who obsesses over preventing them. Long plastered in his office was a quote from his mentor, John Havens, that read: “If there’s risk involved, eliminate it.” Or as Pick has put it more colloquially: “You have to manage the f--- out of it.”
Office Shrine
Pick’s office is known to serve as a shrine to Morgan Stanley. Visitors sit on Vikram Pandit’s chairs or Colm Kelleher’s couch and are surrounded by the memorabilia of other leaders who’ve come before.
His beloved collection of spy novels also finds pride of place, as does a copy of “Billion Dollar Whale,” which unpacks the shocking heist of a Malaysian investment fund, aided by Goldman Sachs investment bankers.
The diminutive Pick was known on the trading floor for his outsized personality and a fanatical devotion to Morgan Stanley. It wasn’t uncommon to see him loosen his tie and run up and down among the desks, seldom shy of getting in people’s faces.
One underling recalled briefly entertaining a job offer from a rival firm after failing to make managing director. Pick snuck up behind his workstation and whispered: “If I hear you speak to them again, I’m going to crack your head.”
When the startled trader turned around, Pick was already strolling away, smiling. The message, the employee said, was that the boss knew he had turned down more money to stay at Morgan Stanley. He took it as motivating.
“That’s not exactly out of a corporate communications handbook in terms of motivation, but it shows you he’s very straightforward and passionate about his job,” said Roberto Mignone, a hedge fund manager and a good friend. “There used to be that phrase WYSIWYG with old computer modeling—what you see is what you get.”
Baiting Blankfein
Pick spent his early childhood in Venezuela, where his father worked for a few years before heading back to New York. He studied at Middlebury, a private liberal arts college in Vermont.
That was fortuitous for Pick, whose cohort included the son of S. Parker Gilbert, the former Morgan Stanley chairman who took the firm public in 1986. Pick eventually got an interview at Morgan Stanley, making the bank his lifelong home, aside from a stint in business school.
He now works from the 40th floor, just a few doors down from CEO James Gorman and the leadership team. His co-president is Andy Saperstein, a longtime Gorman confidant who runs the firm’s massive wealth-management operations. Gorman’s bet on building that business has made Saperstein an equally plausible succession candidate.
Pick never seems to tire of playing up Morgan Stanley’s image as a scrappy underdog. While visiting one of Goldman Sachs’s offices, he nicked a pencil and later groused about how even their stationery was better than what Morgan Stanley had on offer.
He’s also recounted the time, more than a decade ago, when he was at a New York Rangers game—his lifelong team—and crossed paths with Lloyd Blankfein, then CEO of Goldman. Pick introduced himself as working for a small firm that Blankfein had probably never heard of. When Blankfein took the bait, Pick delivered: “Morgan Stanley.”
“If he met me that way, I would have gotten the last word,” Blankfein assured when asked if he recalled the exchange. “Like telling him I never heard of Morgan Stanley or asking if they made power tools.”
—With assistance from Sonali Basak.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.