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Record wealth management gains and strong sales and trading revenues boosted Morgan Stanley’s 3^rd quarter earnings from a year ago.  The firm posted net income of 2.2 billion, or $1.14 per share, up from $313 million, or 5 cents per share, in Q3 2010. The results beat analysts’ profit expectations of $0.30 by a wide margin. 

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (MSSB) has hired Jeff Hack from J.P. Morgan Chase as its chief operating officer in one of several organizational changes announced by company president Gregory Fleming.

According to an internal memo, Hack will oversee MSSB's ongoing technology/operations integration activities. Morgan Stanley is in the midst of integrating its brokerage with that of Smith Barney, which has about 17,800 financial advisors, the most on Wall Street.

A new Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (MSSB) policy allowing its brokers to use BlackBerries for texting could give the brokerage a leg up on main competitors. The policy, announced in late January, was the result of popular demand by field reps. It makes MSSB the only big brokerage to allow text messaging, giving its reps a line of communication not open to rival brokers.

The new policy applies to the roughly 2,000 MSSB advisors and managers who have company-provided BlackBerries. Using the same process it has in place to review staff emails, MSSB says it will keep records of texts to comply with industry requirements to retain all electronic messages for three years.