James Gorman has led Morgan Stanley as its CEO for the last 14 years, a position he assumed

when memories of the global financial crisis were still fresh in investors' minds.

He proceeded to remake the firm, and as he exits Morgan Stanley, it is known as much for its

asset management business as for its storied investment bank.

I sat with him for an exit interview at the firm's headquarters and asked Gorman to reflect on his

years of leadership. To lead anything is a privilege and to be given an opportunity like this

during, you know, in working life, if you happen to be in business, happen to be in financial services, it's an incredible honor.

So I guess the, you know, the reflective side of me would say how lucky I've been.

You try and, you know, one of our core values on the wall when you came in this morning is do the right thing. You try and do the right thing. You make some mistakes long on the way. You get, you get judged in these jobs like you do in your job, David. And, you know, that's, that's, you rise to that. You don't let it, you don't let it get to you. But the main thing I take away is what a privilege to have led such an incredible

institution. Just I'm so proud of the quality of the people, the values, the way we got through

COVID. I mean, there's so many moments through it, and we'll talk about some of the business side.

Sure. But it's more that the human side and role of leadership. Now, one of the, a lot of people

want to be leaders, but they don't want the tough bit that goes with it, which is you get to

make decisions. And your decisions prove to be right or wrong over time. So the accountability,

and that's something I've always sort of risen to. I like being the guy making the call. And if you like that and you're in position to make calls that can really move institutions, in our case, obviously, global bank, you know, incredible privilege of a lifetime.

Yeah. Well, you've made plenty of those decisions, and obviously one of the key ones was repositioning

sort of the business of Morgan Stanley over these last few years, particularly when it comes to asset management.

I mean, is that what people are going to think about when they think about the Gorman era?

What do you think they should think when they look back on these almost 14 years that you've been leading Morgan Stanley?

You know, we came out of the crisis as the last institution that was about to fail.

You know, it's like planes, I described it like planes landing at Newark Airport.

And if you look out over the Hudson River from Manhattan,

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