Morgan Stanley cuts Gorman's pay 10% to $31.5 million for 2022

Morgan Stanley decreased Chief Executive Officer James Gorman's compensation by 10% to $31.5 million for 2022, a year in which profit tumbled and the shares sank.

The package includes $1.5 million in salary and a $7.5 million cash bonus, the firm said in a filing Friday. The vast majority is in the form of $22.5 million in equity-linked awards, which pay out in shares.

Brendon Thorne/Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Blo

The pay package follows an intense, industrywide focus on compensation and other expenses amid a slump in dealmaking and concern about the impact a potential recession will have on Wall Street revenue. At Morgan Stanley, that translated into a round of 1,600 cuts from December in a global workforce of about 82,400.

On Thursday, JPMorgan Chase said it was keeping pay for its chief, Jamie Dimon, at $34.5 million for his work in 2022.

Gorman, 64, received a 6% boost in pay for 2021 after the New York-based company posted its most profitable year ever. A year earlier, he vaulted past Dimon as the best-paid CEO of a major U.S. bank.

In 2022, Morgan Stanley's profit slid by more than a quarter and the shares lost more than 13%.