Morgan Stanley to increase pvt bankers in India by 30%

Morgan Stanley plans to increase the number of private bankers in India by 30 per cent next year, according to Himanshu Bhagat, executive director of its wealth management unit in India.

The company will add 15 advisers to the current 50, Mumbai-based Bhagat said. India, along with Australia and Hong Kong, was the New York-based bank’s fastest-growing markets for wealth management, he said.

“Indian entrepreneurship is coming into its own,” Bhagat said in an interview on December 14. “The million-dollar plus segment will keep growing as we see a lot of cross-border deals next year too.”

India’s wealthy may almost double their assets to $6.4 trillion over the next five years as the world’s second-fastest growing major economy boosted the country’s rich, Credit Suisse Group AG said in its global wealth report in October.

 

The bank is competing with rivals, including UBS AG, Citigroup and Credit Suisse to hire financial advisers in the region. The combined wealth of millionaires in the Asia-Pacific region will increase 8.8 per cent annually until 2018, compared to a global average of 7.1 per cent, according to a report by Capgemini SA and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.

Morgan Stanley had targeted $1 billion in assets when it started its Indian wealth management unit in 2008, Bhagat said. The firm had far exceeded that target, he said, declining to disclose the amount it managed. He expects the assets under management to rise to $5 billion to $7 billion by 2012.

The wealth unit expected to earn about 65 per cent of its revenue from equity-related businesses and about a fifth from managed assets including mutual funds, with the rest from fixed-income and alternative investments, Bhagat said.

Morgan Stanley currently manages about 1,500 family accounts in India through its offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata. It plans to open an office in Chennai in January.

Morgan Stanley accepted a minimum of $1 million from clients, with the average being $5 million, he said. It is the sixth-largest US bank by assets.