The Chinese sovereign wealth fund has already sold 25.5 million of its shares in the US bank for $692.4 million over the last three weeks. The most recent sale happened early in the week, where 1.6 million shares were sold for $43.9 million, reducing CIC's interest to 8.9 per cent.

At present, CIC owns 150.8 million shares in Morgan Stanley and is bound to get 116.1 million shares more after $5.6 billion in principal mandatory convertible bonds it bought in December 2007 convert to common stock in 17 August. The Chinese firm has to keep its holdings under 10 per cent in Morgan Stanley to avoid regulatory scrutiny.