Morgan Stanley expected to complete $13B E-Trade acquisition Friday

Morgan Stanley announced Thursday it has won regulatory approval and expects to complete its $13 billion acquisition of Arlington-based online brokerage E-Trade Financial Corp. on Friday. 

In late July, E-Trade announced that more than 99% of its stockholders had approved the acquisition, which will be one of the largest acquisitions of a local company in recent years.

“We are pleased to have received approval from the Federal Reserve,” Morgan Stanley Chairman and CEO James P. Gorman said in a statement. “Both our teams have worked tirelessly over the past six months to bring our organizations together, and we are excited about the benefits our combined firm will provide to our clients, employees and shareholders.”

In February, the companies indicated that the deal would add approximately $56 billion of low-cost deposits and Morgan Stanley’s wealth and investment management services will contribute to 57% of the firm’s pre-tax profits — more than double what it was a decade ago. 

E-Trade is based in Arlington, but provides online banking service across the nation. It has more than 5.2 million client accounts and more than $360 billion in retail client assets. Morgan Stanley has 3 million accounts and more than $2.7 trillion in client assets.

E-Trade Bank, a subsidiary of E-Trade Financial Corp. (an online trading platform) had the second-highest amount of deposits among Virginia banks, with $40.7 billion in deposits for fiscal year 2018 (behind only Capital One Bank USA).

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