Morgan Stanley posts $91 mn quarterly loss

Morgan Stanley swung into a loss of $91 million for the three months to September, as the financial services firm was mainly hit by lower trading volumes.

In the year-ago period, it had a profit of $498 million.

Morgan Stanley's President and CEO James P Gorman said he is not satisfied with the company's overall performance.

"Our Sales and Trading business was clearly muted; however, we delivered broad-based strength in Investment Banking and improved performance - and positive flows - in both Wealth Management and Asset Management," Gorman noted.

Revenues in the September quarter dropped to $6.67 billion compared to $7.97 billion in the same period a year ago.

Institutional Securities' revenues stood at $2.9 billion, much less than $5 billion in the year-ago period.

According to the firm, other sales and trading losses were $341 million compared with net revenues of $668 million in the third quarter of last year.

"Results for the current quarter primarily reflected funding costs, including costs related to the amount of liquidity held by the firm's US subsidiary banks, while net revenues in the prior year primarily reflected net gains on loans and lending commitments and other hedging activities," the statement said.