It is turning out to be an equities year for the big investment banks, as fixed income revenues fall or stall and fees from dealmaking recover slowly.

The ability to work seamlessly across markets and asset classes paid off for the US firm in a challenging year.

Some capital markets franchises make their name for sheer volume, topping the deal rankings by simply being everywhere. Others take a different tack, picking spots where they know they excel and then doing so. For yet again being on some of the most challenging and intellectually demanding deals in the review period, Morgan Stanley is North America’s best bank for financing.

UOB retains the title of Singapore’s best bank, bolstered by resilient financial performance and a strengthened network across southeast Asia. Under the leadership of chief executive Wee Ee Cheong, the bank devised a three-year plan in 2023 to become the foremost bank in southeast Asia, and it is well on its way to delivering on that aim.

Once again, Morgan Stanley is Asia’s best bank for advisory. The investment bank was the undisputed leader in region-wide advisory during the awards period, notching $172 billion in completed and $117 billion in announced transactions.

MUFG, Japan’s largest bank, had an excellent financial year in the 12 months to March 2024, setting new records for the group.

As balance sheet pressures have intensified, Morgan Stanley has been at the forefront of a changing financial sector landscape.

It is getting tougher for investors to execute block trades of more than €2 million in Europe’s fragmented equity markets. Matching buyers and sellers needs a return to negotiation and away from pure electronic trading.

Anything except a brief stay on as chairman would cast a baleful shadow over the chief executive’s successor at JPMorgan.

Morgan Stanley’s wealth business went from 2.5 million client relationships to 18 million over the course of a couple of years. Now, a quartet of steely US regulators is looking at how the division manages potentially risky clients. Given its rapid pace of growth, this is perhaps less of a surprise than it initially appears.

Once again, Morgan Stanley takes the award for best private bank for sustainability in North America this year. The bank shows consistent leadership in this space with its Investing with Impact platform that now boasts over 300 financial products and accounted for $69 billion in client assets, as of September 2023.

No industry will be more overwhelmingly affected by new forms of artificial intelligence – both generative-AI and other technology to come – than banking. Costly but cost-effective, it is up to banks to make AI work for them, not the other way around.

Regulators are making more mileage out of their settlement with Morgan Stanley than the outcome really deserves.

Morgan Stanley has for years touted its expertise and adherence to confidentiality as reasons to choose it over rivals for equity block trades. But charges brought by regulators over leakages of confidential information by the bank’s former head of US equity syndicate and another employee now make its historic claims look embarrassing.

The annual Senate quizzing of US big bank chief executives threw up all the usual favourite partisan arguments, but little else. If this is oversight, it often lacks insight.

A wealth manager, who came into a legendary but unstable global investment bank and transformed it, hands on a very different and much better firm.

Continuity is likely to be the theme as incoming leader inherits a well-performing franchise, but competition in wealth management and the markets businesses, as well as a still-lacklustre environment for investment banking, will be among Pick’s challenges.

Morgan Stanley swallowed the market whole this year. There was precious little transaction activity that its investment bankers didn’t play a key role in.

Morgan Stanley is a powerhouse in financing. In Asia Pacific ex-China, the US bank helped to complete 42 equity capital markets deals – more than any other bank over the 12 months to the end of March 2023 – worth a total of $5.4 billion, according to Dealogic. And in debt capital markets, it completed 419 deals worth $46.2 billion.

As the immediate chaos of the global financial crisis subsided, Morgan Stanley took a long hard look at its strategy and chose to focus on wealth and investment management. It is a decision that has paid off. Private banking generates steadier, more reliable income streams than the more cyclical business of investment banking.

Moribund primary equity capital markets and a rising interest rate environment meant that investment banks were tested more than ever in the past 12 months as they sought to give clients the options they needed in spite of poor conditions.

The US firm provides the right strategic advice for volatile markets.

Veteran Morgan Stanley investment bankers describe this as the busiest downturn they have ever seen. That is because they have worked on the biggest and most transformative deals in 12 months of shifting values and at times paralyzing uncertainty. The firm has made some cuts, but its new leaders are shaking the business up and bringing in the talent that will be in demand once markets settle.

Recent volatility has proved that crisis preparation is the key to success in banking.

The two chief executives should be on the undercard for the Musk/Zuckerberg cage fight.

The bank has started the process of choosing a successor to CEO James Gorman just as it tries to settle an investigation into its equity block trading practices. This could pose a challenge for Ted Pick.

How on earth, in this environment, did the bank deliver one of its best-ever quarters in Asia?

Supporting its recognition as the world’s best private bank for family offices services, Morgan Stanley wins the regional award in this category, too.

Morgan Stanley’s focus and investment in wealth and asset management over the past few years has created an enhanced, powerful and distinctive offering, illustrated by revenues in wealth management hitting a record high of $24 billion in 2022.

Experience and expertise in investment are standard characteristics of most private banks. Yet, in the booming asset class of environmental, social and governance-related investments, few banks have the length and depth of experience and expertise of Morgan Stanley.