Morgan Stanley (MS) Looking to Cut 300 Branch Offices and 1,200 Jobs Ahead of Brokerage Unit's Merger -Gasparino

In an effort to cut costs heading into the merger of it's brokerage division with Citigroup’s (NYSE: C) Smith Barney unit, Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) is planning to shed 300 branch offices and cut as many as 1,200 jobs, according to FOX Business Network’s Charlie Gasparino.

The bank has already cut 200 jobs as a part of the merger, with many of the job cuts affecting the support staff, but unnamed sources from Morgan Stanley say that the company is far from finished trying to shave $1.1 billion by the end of 2011.

One spokesman from Morgan Stanley told Gasparino that the bank is not “pulling out of markets and we are not shrinking financial advisers."

With the merger, Morgan Stanley will have the largest salesforce on Wall Street with 18,000 brokers, ahead of the 15,000 brokers employed by Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), which absorbed the former leader Merrill Lynch.

Morgan Stanley acquired Smith Barney in early 2009 in a move to bolster its advisory business when many banks were cutting back on trading activities following the economic meltdown which saw banks taking billions in bailout funds.

Gasparino said that people at Smith Barney said the cuts have hit their side of the merger more than that of Morgan Stanley, and that more than just the support staff may see job elimination in the future. The sources suggested that the job cuts may hit the research analysts of both Smith Barney and Morgan Stanley.

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