It was inevitable. Dean Witter is gone. Long live Morgan Stanley! Ever since Morgan Stanley merged with Dean Witter & Co. in 1997, it was clear that one day the name would be shortened to just Morgan Stanley.
The Morgan moniker has cachet. When J.P. Morgan & Co. merged with Chase Manhattan Corp. at the end of 2000, the name was changed to J.P. Morgan Chase, although Chase had been the bigger bank and Chase's name, too, carried a lot of history. And already we're finding that people at Morgan/Chase tend to call the bank J.P. Morgan, dropping off the Chase.
Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley has been busy on another front, dropping its No. 2 executive, 56-year-old John Mack. The Wall Street Journal reported Mack's departure was the result of a power struggle with CEO Phillip Purcell. All looks lovey-dovey, though. Purcell praised Mack, saying, "No one has done more than Mack to make Morgan Stanley Dean Witter the world's leading financial services firm."
