Making it at Morgan Stanley

AS Morgan Stanley chairman and chief executive Philip Purcell fights for his corporate life, it's a sure bet the whispers and rumours among the rank and file of one of the world's top investment banks will become ever more bizarre.

The power struggle at Morgan Stanley - between Purcell and eight dissident shareholders calling for his ousting and replacement with former director Bob Scott - may be going on above the heads of the bank's more ordinary workers. They might not even yet be directly affected. But they will have their eyes on the high-stakes jockeying among Morgan Stanley's Wall Street titans.

Predicting which way the crumbs will fall from an argument at the bank's top table could make or break your career.

I was one of those ordinary workers on a trading floor in New York, and personal survival issues tended to dominate my thinking. However, there often seemed to be one rule for some and a different one for others, particularly if the others involved were bringing in the cash.

A colleague was once frogmarched out of the door, never to return, having used 'inappropriate language' in an internet chatroom while at his desk during his lunch break.

On the other hand, a successful British salesman thought it would be a laugh to drop his trousers on the trading floor and moon at his boss, yet was only given a mild reprimand.

Incidents such as these highlighted the precariousness of one's situation and sharpened the mind.

Further up the food chain, it was rumoured that a high-flying managing director had his own en-suite bathroom adjoining his office as one of his perks. But at lower levels the focus was on cost control.

Class divide

Invisible iron curtains divided the revenue-producing front-office salesmen and traders from the back-office support staff, who were viewed as a cost centre and often as semi-slaves.

To join the front office, you had to have gone to the right university and preferably have a respected MBA. Back-office staff tended to come from Brooklyn and the outer boroughs of New York. The lucky few - of which I was one - made it into the 'elite' back office in midtown Manhattan where you could mingle with the traders, hoping one would take a liking to you and let you cross the metaphorical Berlin Wall into the front office.

Nepotism, of course, could help break down barriers. Two colleagues were catapulted into the midtown back office. The father of one was a former managing director, the other's father worked for an influential client. Even so, there was still pressure to perform and the ex-managing director's son soon found himself banished to the back office in Brooklyn.

Maintaining your place in the hierarchy often meant going along unquestioningly with the corporate propaganda - or at least keeping quiet if you disagreed.

Visions and values

When I was at Morgan Stanley, 'visions and values' were flavour of the month. This was a bureaucratic form-filling exercise accompanied by a 100-page manual. The aim was to put a corporate stamp on your private career plans. Oddly, no one said that what they really wanted was their boss's job.

Advancement advice to anyone in such an organisation is encapsulated in the phrase 'follow the money'. Moneymakers got what they wanted and those able to tag along with them were rewarded with a large share in the bonus pool and promotion prospects.

An ex-colleague who started out in a similar job to mine in London ended up being taken under the wing of one such guru. Despite putting up with lots of verbal abuse, he is now a multi-millionaire.

The paths to fortune are fickle, though. A similar predecessor left to join Barings. In his new home he was, for a time, a money-spinner. But his career ended in tears. His name was Nick Leeson.

Messages from on high at Morgan Stanley got more interesting in times of corporate upheaval. When a merger with fellow investment bank SG Warburg was first proposed, we were all told what a dynamic force the two companies would make together.

Within two weeks, the deal was off and the message was one of sour grapes, with management implying that they only really wanted Mercury Asset Management anyway and had no interest in the rest. Meanwhile, employees in the London office were voting with their feet, and fax machines were buzzing to the sound of CVs being sent to prospective employers.

In contrast, when retail broker Dean Witter was brought into the Morgan fold, it made very little difference to the workers - except for people in cash equities, who were genuinely worried about their jobs.

All it meant was slightly cheaper brokerage on our personal trading accounts and the right to a Discover credit card. Of course, at board level it made a world of a difference, the price of the deal being installing Philip Purcell as chairman and chief executive.

That price has been too high for some. The power struggle at Morgan Stanley is mainly a dispute about who gets most influence and hence the biggest share of the pie. The ordinary worker keeps his head down and gets on with producing it. He can only hope the right man comes out on top and lifts his section and career with it.