Smith Barney Name May Go Away

The financial crisis has unquestionably altered the face of Wall Street. Today’s WSJ reports that Morgan Stanley (MS) is considering getting rid of the name Smith Barney.

If Smith Barney were to be dropped it would join a raft of Wall Street icons to disappear. Morgan Stanley itself killed off the Dean Witter name, and Citigroup offed Salomon Brothers. The financial crisis claimed the names Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.

Morgan Stanley now holds 51% of the joint venture, Wall Street’s biggest brokerage force, and has said it plans to buy the rest in the coming years. Morgan Stanley Chief Executive James Gorman has made the retail brokerage business a key part of his strategy for the firm.

A Morgan Stanley spokesman declined to comment specifically on a potential name change, but said “we regularly survey clients about a lot of things relevant to our brand, and I wouldn’t read a whole lot into this.”

Here’s one of John Houseman’s Smith Barney ads with the famous tagline, “They make money the old fashioned way. They URRHNN it.”

Posted by on March 8th, 2011 at 7:06 am


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