Ruth Porat's long run as an executive and banker at Morgan Stanley has been marked by bold career choices that often, though not always, paid off.
The 57-year-old finance chief, who is leaving later this year to become the chief financial officer at Google Inc., represented a range of clients in technology, finance and government before moving to become one of Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman's top lieutenants in 2010.
"She was always among the most creative, thoughtful and helpful bankers," said Lewis Sachs, who served as counselor to the U.S. Treasury secretary and head of President Barack Obama's Financial Crisis Response Team before leaving government in 2010.
Ms. Porat exits Morgan Stanley after a five-year stint as finance chief that saw the firm emerge from a near-death experience during the financial crisis with a new strategy that prioritized steady results over the swing-for-the-fences traders' mentality that ruled Wall Street in the previous era.
"It has been quite a ride: up, down and sideways, but not for a moment dull," Ms. Porat wrote Tuesday in a memorandum to employees. "The best part has been to work with James to restore Morgan Stanley to the pre-eminence it historically enjoyed."
Under Mr. Gorman and Ms. Porat, Morgan Stanley shed billions of dollars in assets tied to riskier businesses, including its debt-trading arm, improved the firm's key capital ratios, passed the government's stress tests and began returning billions of dollars to shareholders through buybacks and dividend increases.
"Over the course of the last five years, Ruth's work has been instrumental in putting Morgan Stanley on our front foot again," Mr. Gorman wrote Tuesday in a memo to employees. "On a personal level, Ruth has been a terrific partner and friend. Over the many hundreds of hours we have spent working together, she has won my great affection and highest esteem, a sentiment I know our board members and operating-committee members share."
Ms. Porat has spent 28 years at Morgan Stanley, but left the firm briefly in the 1990s, following legendary banker Robert Greenhill to Smith Barney. Ms. Porat later regretted the move, returning to Morgan Stanley in 1996.
By 2000, she was a top investment banker to some of the hottest Internet companies during the dot-com bubble, taking public powerhouses such as Amazon.com Inc.
When she was diagnosed with cancer in 2001, Morgan Stanley's global head of investment banking told her that coming to work could help her recover.
"He wanted me to know that when I came in it was for me and not for Morgan Stanley,'' Ms. Porat said, according to the 2009 book "How Remarkable Women Lead," which features a chapter on Ms. Porat. "He knew how much I loved to work.”
Ms. Porat would later transition to advising on financial-industry deals, just as that business ambled toward a crisis. Among her assignments: the 2004 spinoff of General Electric Co.'s insurance arm, Genworth Financial Inc. In 2006, Morgan Stanley named her head of the firm's financial-institutions banking group.
Soon, Ms. Porat began working with a different kind of client: the U.S. government. She, along with fellow Morgan Stanley banker Robert Scully advised the Treasury Department on the takeovers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as the mortgage meltdown started to overwhelm the U.S. economy.
Her role within Morgan Stanley would change once more, in 2010, when she became finance chief.
"I was disappointed," when the firm appointed her finance chief, Mr. Sachs said. "As an outsider and a potential client, it was good to have her in that role as a banker. But it was no surprise Morgan Stanley would've wanted her to be advising them."
Write to Justin Baer at justin.baer@wsj.com
No comments:
Post a Comment