Morgan Stanley to buy E*Trade Financial in $13 billion deal

(Reuters) – Morgan Stanley (N:) said on Thursday it would buy discount brokerage E*Trade Financial Corp (O:) in an all-stock deal worth about $13 billion, the biggest deal by a Wall Street bank since the financial crisis.

The deal will help Morgan Stanley boost its wealth management unit, a business that Chief Executive Officer James Gorman has been trying grow to help it ride out weak periods for trading and investment banking.

E*TRADE has over 5.2 million client accounts with over $360 billion of retail client assets, adding to Morgan Stanley’s existing 3 million client relationships and $2.7 trillion of client assets.

E*Trade shareholders will receive 1.0432 Morgan Stanley shares for each share as part of the deal. That translates to $58.74 per share – a premium of 30.7% to the last closing price of E*Trade shares.

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Shares of E*Trade Financial were up 24.6% at $56 in the premarket trade.

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