What Morgan Stanley's 184 new managing directors actually show
Morgan Stanley promoted 184 people to managing director for 2026, a 6% rise from last year that still trails its 2022 class of 199.
Morgan Stanley has told 184 employees they will become managing directors, the firm's highest designation. The class is about 6% larger than the 173 managing directors the bank named for 2025.
The increase follows a strong year in Morgan Stanley's advisory business and arrives alongside similarly timed announcements at Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. But set against Morgan Stanley's own recent history, the new class is not a record. It matches the size of the 2023 class and falls short of the 199 managing directors the bank promoted in 2022.
A Bigger Class, Not The Biggest
Morgan Stanley's managing director classes have moved unevenly over the past five years: 199 new managing directors in 2022, 184 in 2023, 155 in 2024, 173 in 2025 and 184 again for 2026, according to the bank's own announcements.
Measured only against last year, the 6% increase looks like clear momentum. Measured against the full run of recent classes, the 2026 total simply returns the count to where it stood in 2023, after a sharp dip in 2024. The 2026 total matches the size of Morgan Stanley's 2023 class and falls short of the 199 managing directors the bank promoted in 2022.
Morgan Stanley notified the new managing directors of their promotions on January 7, 2026. The bank publicly released the full list of names two days later, on January 9.
Where The New Managing Directors Sit
Nearly half of the new class, 48%, came from Morgan Stanley's Institutional Securities Group, the division that advises corporate clients on IPOs, buyouts and sales. Investment management accounted for 12% of promotions and wealth management for 9%, with the rest spread across other parts of the firm. Overall, 70% of the new managing directors work in revenue-generating roles, while 30% work in middle- and back-office or corporate functions.
Geographically, the Americas accounted for 67% of the new class, Europe, the Middle East and Africa for 18%, and Asia for 14%, spanning 14 countries in total. Morgan Stanley operates in 42 countries overall, according to the bank, making the 14 countries represented in the new managing director class a small slice of its global footprint.
Who Got Promoted
Women made up 27% of the new managing directors and men 73%. Among U.S.-based promotions, 31% identified as ethnically diverse — 17% Asian, 6% Hispanic, 5% Black and 3% other — with the remaining 69% identifying as white.
The typical new managing director had spent about 11 years at Morgan Stanley, and 49% of the class had originally joined the firm as non-officers rather than arriving at a senior level from outside. Thirty-five percent hold advanced degrees.
The Dealmaking Rebound Behind The Numbers
The larger class follows a rebound in Morgan Stanley's advisory business. The bank worked on more than $1 trillion in announced deal value across more than 400 transactions in 2025, up from about $707 billion across 368 transactions in 2024. That placed Morgan Stanley third on worldwide rankings of mergers-and-acquisitions financial advisers compiled by the data provider LSEG, behind Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan.
The pattern was not unique to Morgan Stanley. Goldman's investment-banking fee volumes climbed close to levels last seen in 2021, according to Reuters — a year that also produced Goldman's largest managing director class of the past several years. Coverage of the announcements noted that Wall Street banks are heading into what executives and dealmakers generally expect to be "a more active dealmaking environment."
Goldman led Wall Street's league tables for mergers and acquisitions in 2025, according to Reuters. Even so, the bank has seen higher-than-normal turnover among senior bankers, losing more than a dozen senior investment bankers in 2025 amid internal reorganizations and a slow start to the year.
“The 2026 total matches the size of Morgan Stanley's 2023 class and falls short of the 199 managing directors the bank promoted in 2022.”
How Morgan Stanley Compares With Its Rivals
Goldman Sachs promoted 638 employees to managing director effective January 1, 2026, the highest number since 2021, when it named 643. That is up from 608 in the class that took effect at the start of 2024. The Americas accounted for 358 of Goldman's new managing directors, EMEA for 159, Asia-Pacific for 78 and Bengaluru and Hyderabad for 43. More than 70% came from revenue-generating businesses. Women made up 27% of the class; 31% identified as Asian, 4% as Hispanic or Latino and 3% as Black.
Goldman's 608-person class effective 2024 was itself a 5% decline from the 643 promoted in 2021. That group split 47% between investment banking and trading, 24% asset and wealth management and 2% Platform Solutions, the bank's consumer-lending unit. Women made up 31% of that class, up from 30% in 2021, while the share identifying as Black fell to 2% from 5% and the share identifying as Hispanic or Latino fell to 4% from 5%. That 2024 class spanned 44 offices worldwide, compared with 54 for the group effective 2026. Of the incoming 2026 class, Goldman said the group "comprises leaders" who have made a significant impact on the firm's business and its people.
Goldman's 2023 announcement also detailed what changes with the title: a typical managing director base salary of $400,000, replacing a previous guaranteed minimum of $500,000 that the bank discontinued, plus access to its Pine Street leadership program, the option to invest in Goldman's private investment funds, and a personal wealth adviser.
Bank of America promoted 394 people to managing director effective January 1, 2026, up 2% from roughly 386 a year earlier. Of those, 44 came from investment banking, 48 from global markets and 9 from research, with the rest spread across the bank's other divisions. The promotions followed Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan's announcement of higher profitability targets tied to technology investment and expansion, part of a plan to catch up with Wall Street rivals.
What The Announcements Don't Say
None of the three banks' public disclosures included named succession plans, specific executive quotes about retention strategy, or an explanation for why particular divisions saw larger or smaller shares of promotions. The material that is public — division splits, geography, tenure and diversity statistics — describes the composition of each class but not the reasoning behind individual decisions.
The Bank of America figures were described by a source who was not authorized to speak publicly, since the bank's own announcement had not yet been made when the numbers were reported in December 2025.
What the figures do show is that all three banks expanded their senior ranks for 2026, with the size of each class reflecting factors specific to its own business rather than moving in lockstep with rivals.
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