Wirehouse views "Global Wealth Management" as more rflective of mission. Morgan Stanley is changing the name of its retail brokerage unit is to Global Wealth Management Group from Individual Investor Group (IIG). The change is an attempt to communicate the unit's mission “of helping people manage their long-term wealth,” the wirehouse’s newly appointed brokerage president James Gorman says in a memo to employees with today’s date on it.

“Our new name also more fully aligns our retail business with our powerful brand. We are moving forward as one firm, and we are actively partnering across the organization to realize the full potential of the powerhouse that is Morgan Stanley,” Gorman says in the memo, which Morgan Stanley confirmed as genuine.

Gorman, former head of Merrill Lynch’s retail brokerage business, started work at Morgan Stanley last month. He now leads a force of about 9,500 brokers in 500 retail offices worldwide. At last count IIG had $617 billion in client assets.

Merrill has a penchant for putting the word "global" in front of its business-unit names.

More than a name

The re-branding comes against a backdrop of comprehensive change for IIG. Last August, shortly before Morgan Stanley announced Gorman’s appointment, the company’s CEO John Mack cracked the whip over the firm’s retail reps, vowing to rid the firm of underachievers. At the time about 1,000 such reps – those with more than eight years on the job whose annual business in fees and commissions fell short of $225,000 – were expected to get pink slips by the end of 2005.

“We have smart, ambitious, talented people and world-class products and services,” Gorman, tells his new colleagues in today’s memo. “As the Global Wealth Management Group, we more effectively communicate who we are and what we offer the world's affluent investors.”

In its 2005 Annual Report Morgan Stanley is candid about some of the challenges its “strong retail brokerage franchise” faces in the fight to become more competitive with other big-name firms. “We need to invest in the retail business to realize its full potential,” the report says. “We need to expand our product offerings, bringing new and creative products to our retail client base through our retail sales force. We also need to continue to build our high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth business, which is a key target for growth and investment. And we need to invest in technology and compliance, as well as in our most productive financial advisors and investment representatives. It’s going to take time” – “several years” the annual report hazards in another passage – “to get the retail business where we want it to be, but we’ve already begun taking some of the necessary steps to improve profitability and margins, and James Gorman will be helping us to achieve the full potential of this business.”

For all that, however, some Wall Street watchers wonder about the depth of Morgan Stanley’s commitment to retail brokerage. They see in its failed bid to acquire BlackRock BlackRock the outlines of a plan to return to its pre-Dean Witter roots as an investment-banking and investment-management powerhouse. –FWR

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