Morgan Stanley announced plans this week to sell its Spanish brokerage- and asset- management business to La Caixa, a Spanish financial-services firm, for $885 million

There are many benefits that top financial advisors (producing $1 million or more a year) receive when moving to a new firm. The most obvious is a handsome transition package of 220 percent or more of trailing production (over a 3-year period)...

Financial firms have written down more than $100 billion in capital (at the time of this writing). And, the destruction of capital is expected to spread now that some bond insurers seem to be on the lip of insolvency. Not to pick on our friends at...

Maybe Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain just wanted to test his audience. At an investment conference today, Thain said that Merrill would abandon CDO underwriting and other structured-credit businesses, the very ones that led to the subprime meltdown...

Merrill Lynch will not pay 2007 bonuses to top executives—including retail brokerage head Bob McCann, the bank announced in an SEC filing Wednesday

It looks like the worst of the mortgage meltdown is far from over for the big banks. In a surprise warning today, UBS announced that it would post a record $4 billion

Apparently, some people still think it’s far too easy for brokers to wipe their records clean, particularly where customer dispute information is concerned. A story on SmartMoney

UPDATE: Morgan Stanley is laying off 1,000 people, primarily in tech, operations and support roles, according to the bank. Sources familiar with the situation said these jobs would be concentrated primarily in the wealth management, asset...

RIAs are winning. No. Wait. Wirehouses are winning more assets, but RIAs are growing faster. Well, nevermind. It’s tough to tell these days. But whoever the winner is, there’s no doubt both industries are striving for the same things...

Citigroup announced another whopper of a write-down in the fourth quarter; full-year results were dismal. That said, Global Wealth Management, which includes Smith Barney, was a bright spot.