Morgan Stanley Secures $5bn from China

Telegraph

Morgan Stanley has become the latest global investment bank to resort to a foreign state bail-out after the Wall Street giant revealed its sub-prime related losses had ballooned to $9.4bn.

In a further sign of the shift in power to the Far East and Middle East, China's sovereign wealth fund - China Investment Corp (CIC) - is injecting $5bn to shore up the Wall Street giant's capital position in return for equity units that will convert into as much as 9.9pc of Morgan Stanley stock.

Morgan Stanley joins a growing list of banks that have sought help from cash-rich developing economies to stem their escalating sub-prime problems.

Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund invested $7.5bn in Citigroup last month while last week GIC, an investment arm of the Singapore government, and an undisclosed Middle Eastern investor injected Sfr13bn (£5.6bn) into Swiss bank UBS.

Earlier this year China Development Bank and Temasek, another Singapore state investment fund, became major investors in Barclays as part of a deal that would have seen them put up large amounts of cash had the British bank succeeded with its takeover for Dutch rival ABN Amro.

CIC, which has roughly $200bn in assets, also took a 3pc stake in Blackstone as part of the US private equity group's initial public offering in July.

Morgan Stanley's worsening sub-prime position caused it to post a $3.59bn net fourth quarter loss. Its mortgage related writedowns have shot up from the $3.7bn announced last month and include $7.8bn in sub-prime related writedowns.

John Mack, chairman and chief executive, said accountability rests with him and that he will forego his 2007 bonus. He added: "The writedown Morgan Stanley took this quarter is deeply disappointing -to me, to our colleagues, to our board and to our shareholders.

"Across the firm, we have moved aggressively to make the necessary changes, and these isolated losses by a small trading team in one part of the firm should not overshadow the momentum we see in virtually all of our other businesses."

The increase in the level of sub-prime writedowns comes after UBS more than tripled its provision to $14.4bn earlier this month. Analysts expect Merrill Lynch and Citigroup to follow suit and reveal deeper losses than those already revealed.