Fundsters keeping tabs on the happenings in the brokerage world will find an item from Bloomberg last Friday of interest, though the news is not a surprise. The wire service reports that Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, the largest brokerage in the world, will probably shutter 120 additional offices in the US to get rid of overlap.

"There's overlap in just about every market in the country between Smith Barney and Morgan Stanley offices," Morgan Stanely Smith Barney president Charles Johnston told Bloomberg. "There's no grand plan to dramatically shrink the footprint, but there's an awful lot of no-brainer decisions when you do a deal like this."

As of March 31, MSSB had 870 branches in the country and Johnston sees that number dropping to around 750.

MSSB had 18,140 financial advisors at the end of March. The number of advisors will likely be around 18,000, according to Johnston. 

Edited by: Armie Margaret Lee


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