In a regulatory filing Wednesday, Morgan Stanley disclosed that it had granted James Gorman, the new head of the firm’s retail brokerage unit, around $29 million in company stock, plus options on another 302,128 shares.
The grant mostly goes to replace compensation Gorman would have earned at his previous job with Merrill Lynch, but didn’t because of his resignation, according to the filing. Gorman started his job as retail head of Morgan the last week of February.
Sixty percent of the options vest immediately, and the rest vest on Feb. 16, 2007. The stock options have an exercise price of $60.81, the closing price on Friday, Feb. 17, the day they were granted. At that price, the total grant of 480,906 shares is worth about $29.24 million. Of the total, some $26.37 million goes to replace the lost Merrill compensation, the filing said.
