James Gorman isn’t going to stay in Morgan Stanley’s top job for life. And he knows the three finalists who are competing to replace him.
“You plan a generation of people who can take over,” Gorman said in an interview Thursday with Bloomberg TV from Davos, Switzerland. “Ultimately the board will decide.”
Though he didn’t name his likely successors, Jonathan Pruzan’s announced exit will leave Ted Pick and Andy Saperstein, the New York-based firm’s co-presidents, in the running alongside investment-management chief Dan Simkowitz.
In the meantime, Gorman said he isn’t panicking about an impasse in Washington over the debt ceiling, which could eventually trigger the first default on US obligations. “I’m confident that politics will finally get to the right place,” Gorman said. “The other option is not an option.”
The political fight over raising the debt ceiling threatens to upend financial markets sometime after early June. The White House has said the debt ceiling should be increased without conditions, and administration officials have said they won’t negotiate.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen last week told Congress that the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling will be reached by Thursday. After that, Treasury can deploy special accounting measures to avert a payment default, she said.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.