Morgan Stanley's accidental email MD had been having a great year
It has not been a good week for Mohamed Atmani at Morgan Stanley. This is a shame, because it had been a good year.
Atmani is the managing director (MD) at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong who sometime earlier this week accidentally sent an internal list of 100 investment banking deals that Morgan Stanley is pitching on in Asia, plus price-sensitive information, to some clients.
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We have not spoken to Atmani. He is Morgan Stanley's head of financial sponsors for the Asia Pacific region, and Bloomberg said he had been intending to send out a client-facing version of the file. This version was more generic and included general updates and a list of recent transactions. Seemingly it did not include price-sensitive information.
Bloomberg said Atmani attempted to retract the message. Charlie Bouckaert, JPMorgan's global head of M&A, helpfully told Bloomberg it makes sense to "run to the fire" in these situations and to take ownership of the mistake.
It's not clear whether Atmani has spent today running to the flames, but it's worth noting both that it's an unfortunate year for this to have happened to him, and that JPMorgan is Morgan Stanley's major competitor in the Asian financial sponsors space.
Figures from data provider Dealogic show Morgan Stanley ranks first for year-to-date Asia ex-Japan financial sponsor banking revenues, which is the business that Atmani runs. This is its best ranking year-to-date since 2023. Usually, JPMorgan comes out on top. Bouckaert's comments may have contained an element of Schadenfreude.
Morgan Stanley may tolerate Atmani's error in the circumstances. It could have been worse. He could have been junior. One former banker has been recalling an incident in which an analyst accidentally sent an email accusing a fellow analyst of being a "little sh*t" to the whole firm. The best part of that incident was the follow-up emails. "Dozens of people replying to all, saying please do not reply to all. It was great on a big trading floor because people would chuckle every time one hit everyone’s inbox," the banker recalls.
Sometimes awkward emails are sent intentionally. In 2015, Justin Kwan, a second year analyst at Barclays in New York emailed incoming interns suggesting that they might find themselves sleeping beneath desks. The email went viral but doesn't appear to have damaged Kwan's career; he now works for a major private equity firm in New York.
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