Within weeks of signing the second-biggest deal of his career, Morgan Stanley boss James Gorman was recovering from Covid-19 in his Manhattan apartment and watching the world’s economies lurch towards a coronavirus-driven recession.
Some might have fretted about committing to pay $13bn for online brokerage ETrade at such a perilous time. But within months, Mr Gorman was already thinking about another big play, the $7bn acquisition of investment manager Eaton Vance, announced last week.
“Timing is a funny thing,” says Mr Gorman, who argues that both deals were “strategically obvious over many years” and made just as much sense in the Covid world as before it.