Morgan Stanley said it plans to shed 10 per cent of its institutional securities staff and 9 per cent of the firm's asset-management group as the economy contracts and client demand wanes, according to Bloomberg.

The cuts are in addition to headcount reductions disclosed earlier this year, chief financial officer Colm Kelleher said at a conference in

New York hosted by Merrill Lynch. Morgan Stanley did not immediately return calls from WealthBriefing to confirm the figures.

The redundancies amount to between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of Morgan Stanley's 46,383 workers, said a person familiar with the matter, speaking anonymously because the numbers aren't public, Bloomberg said. The reductions add to the 4,440 people Morgan Stanley has already fired in 2008 and increase to more than 155,000 the number of jobs eliminated by the financial industry worldwide since the middle of last year.

Morgan Stanley and larger rival Goldman Sachs are cutting jobs after opting to convert to deposit-taking banks from securities firms in September.

Morgan Stanley last month raised $9 billion from
Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. and received $10 billion from the

US government.

Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley announced that Cece Sutton will become president of retail banking and Jonathan Witter will be chief operating officer at the same division, reporting to Ms Sutton. Both executives join from Wachovia, the bank recently acquired by rival

US bank Wells Fargo.