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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Vosilla who wrote (67395)	8/3/2006 4:06:37 PM
From: shades	Respond to of 110194

Morgan Stanley Restructures Retail Risk (DO WHAT? THey want the monkey boy who has always been handed a fish to learn to fish himself? Are you kidding me? Is this so when the lawsuits come instead of laying off a VP who was in charge they can say the little monkey boy was in charge and fire him instead? Can a field officer see the same things as a general at HQ?) By Jaime Levy Pessin A Dow Jones Newswires Column NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--In an effort to cut legal costs and regulatory issues coming out of its branches, Morgan Stanley's (MS) global wealth-management division is shrinking its risk structure and pushing day-to-day decisions into the field. In March, the firm announced it would streamline its risk structure. Since then, it has cut eight regional risk positions (now called divisional risk officers) to four and reduced its 65 area positions to 22 district risk officers. Although some people have been redeployed, others were laid off. A Morgan Stanley spokesman declined to disclose the number. At a May conference, James Gorman, Morgan Stanley's retail brokerage chief, said the global wealth-management group's legal costs amounted to about 7% of its revenue in 2005. The goal of the restructuring, said Thomas Harms, chief business risk officer of the global wealth-management group, is to reduce legal costs by giving risk officers more ownership and accountability while giving branch staff more leeway to make day-to-day decisions. "The No. 1 thing we were looking to do is instill a sense of accountability, ownership and guardianship in the organization," Harms said, adding that suitability issues pose the greatest risk at the branch level. "By having fewer individuals, we have less scattered responsibilities." So far, all 22 district risk-officer positions have been filled, and two of the four divisional positions are occupied. Harms said job offers are pending for the other two. The regulatory environment for the brokerage industry has changed dramatically over the last five years, and many firms continue to grapple with how to balance responsibilities between headquarters and the field. Some have beefed up their compliance staffs in corporate offices; others have added compliance assistants in the branches. Morgan Stanley's approach tries to straddle the two: Although the new system has a smaller number of divisional and district risk officers, they are stronger and more coordinated, Harms said. Still, the smaller numbers allow more responsibility to be placed in the hands of the administrative and branch managers beneath them. "The prior management team and prior structure sought to raise decision-making up to the corporate level. One of the challenges we're finding now is achieving guardianship, accountability and ownership at the branch level," Harms said, noting that employees were frequently looking to headquarters for decisions. "In order to be responsive, flexible and skilled at all levels, we have to ask for decision-making at the branch level, to empower employees. "We're asking our employees to do their homework, study situations and make more decisions down at the local branch level than they would have ever done before," he said. "We're comfortable with that, knowing we have a risk structure in place." -By Jaime Levy Pessin, Dow Jones Newswires, 201-938-4546; jpessin@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires August 03, 2006 14:42 ET (18:42 GMT)

To: John Vosilla who wrote (67395)	8/3/2006 4:20:06 PM
From: shades	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

Starbucks' Schultz: Share Selloff Is An Overreaction >SBUX (BRIC - get ready to be americanized - BRIC MEN - get ready for princess to bitch you out and runup 250 a month at sbux - El Mat where is your daughter? - hehe) NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) Chief Executive Howard Schultz called Thursday's selling in the company's shares an overreaction. The selling comes a day after the coffee chain posted third-quarter results that included a July same-store sales growth figure of 4% that troubled investors. "This is a moment in time (in) which people have clearly overreacted," Schultz told CNBC Thursday. Same-store sales "should not measure the health and success of a company that has gone from 11 stores in 1987 to 12,000 today in almost 40 countries." Earlier, shares of Starbucks fell as low as $28.72 compared with its year low of $23 reached Sept. 20. Shares recently traded at $30.74, down 7.7%. Schultz said Starbucks' biggest opportunities come from expanding the chain internationally. He said Starbucks is in the works to open stores in Russia, India and Brazil. -By Erica Owen, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5393; erica.owen@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires August 03, 2006 15:48 ET (19:48 GMT)