Morgan Stanley chairman and CEO Ted Pick joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the latest market trends, IPO pipeline, M&A outlook, state of the economy, and more.
Questions asked in this interview
4
0:34More than excellent, like almost the best of times, right?
1:35Can you put your finger on things that you can control that are going well?
3:52Does that slow down the prospects for business from any of the big corporate CEOs that you're dealing with or is that something you blow right through?
6:42... about some of the, when we've talked about AI and the market cap creation from companies that didn't exist two or three years ago and it's not a zero-sum game, but wealth creation is hard to even figure out how this happens, is it not?
Joining us now in Europe. We're cheering this great interview we're about to do.
Yeah, exactly. With Ted Pick with his insights on global markets, M&A pipeline, China, this company's investment strategies for the year ahead. Ted Pick, chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley. And it's good to see. I heard from your predecessor because I guess I said some nice stuff about it, but the stock, beautiful what's happening. Ted, I mean, he set it up. You're continuing the very good results from one of the preeminent investment banks.
Well, it definitely is as good as it's been a long time in the investment banking space because as you know, the merger activity got stalled first by the pandemic and then rising rates and sponsors didn't know what to do. But now it's happening and it's happening large cap as well because the AI is of course real and people need to defease that cost. So you're seeing a ton of large cap M&A and you're also seeing cross-border activity and that also brings great IPO volume into the market. We're seeing real companies, real capitalization growth companies that aren't wanting to stay private much longer. They want to come. So as an investment banking matter, it's a great setup. In our wealth business too, you know, assets have accumulated. Folks want to diversify. They like working with their financial advisor. You know, Joe, we're the largest administrator to corporate plans in the country. So folks want to pay for their retirement by being well invested. And the E*TRADE platform is doing great. So between wealth and asset management and the investment bank, things are going good.
Can you put your finger on things that you can control that are going well? Whether I'm sure you'd say that the environment for artificial intelligence and all that entails in terms of excitement and sentiment and funding, but tax policy is better, deregulation is better. The Fed has done a pretty good job in recent years.
7 more exchanges in this transcript
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Pick, E. (2026, January 21). Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick: Corporate health of large cap companies is excellent [Interview transcript]. CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/652848/
MLA
Edward Pick. "Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick: Corporate health of large cap companies is excellent." CNBC Television, 21 Jan. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/652848/.
BibTeX
@misc{pick2026_652848,
author = {Edward Pick},
title = {Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick: Corporate health of large cap companies is excellent},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jan},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/652848/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
