Morgan Stanley Star Exits After an Email Leak
Asia Economist's Note
Contained Comments
That Criticized Singapore
HONG KONG -- Morgan Stanley's star Asia economist thought he could opine freely among his own colleagues. He was wrong.
The sudden departure of Andy Xie from the investment bank Friday was precipitated by the leak of an internal email he wrote Sept. 18 containing disparaging comments about Singapore. The nine-paragraph note, with the subject line "Observations at the IMF/WB Conference (internal)," included an account of a private dinner hosted by Singapore's prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, during the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings last month.
"I thought that the questioners were competing with each other to praise Singapore as the success story of globalization," he wrote, according to a copy of the email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by Morgan Stanley. In contrast, he cited "money laundering" as responsible for Singapore's success. "These western people didn't know what they were talking about," he wrote.
Mr. Xie declined to comment on the details of his leaving the firm. According to a person familiar with the matter, the contents of the email are connected with his departure.
Speaking by telephone from Guangzhou, in southern China, Mr. Xie said the email was written at "the spur of the moment" and some of the language was "not appropriate" for public consumption.
"When I write something for the public eye, I choose the wording carefully," Mr. Xie said. But he added: "Nothing I write, in private or in public, will ever contradict each other."
The incident underscores the problem analysts, strategists and economists at big firms can face in expressing their opinions without offending their employers' clients. Earlier this year, Ernst & Young LLP, one of the Big Four accounting firms, retracted a report estimating that bad loans in China were five times the publicly disclosed numbers, after drawing an indirect rebuke from the country's central bank. The accounting firm is the auditor of the nation's biggest bank, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., or ICBC. Ernst & Young said the estimate was erroneous.
It is also the latest example of how quickly an email aimed for a private audience can become public. Since Mr. Xie didn't intend for the email to leave the firm, the views in the document weren't vetted by Morgan Stanley's compliance and legal departments.
"This email expresses the views of one individual and does not in any way represent the views of the firm," Morgan Stanley spokeswoman Po-ling Cheung said. "This is an internal email based on personal suppositions and aimed at stimulating internal debate amongst a small group of intended recipients. Morgan Stanley has been a very strong supporter of Singapore."
It is unclear whether the email drew a response from the Singapore government. A spokeswoman for Singapore's Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts referred questions to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which declined to comment unless it could establish the veracity of the email.
In the wake of the 2003 settlement between regulators and several Wall Street firms over tainted stock-research reports, analysts and researchers are kept under much closer watch to ensure that the opinions about companies expressed in their reports are independent of the firms' drive to win investment-banking business.
In Asia, much of the investment-banking business, including trading of foreign currency and fixed-income products, comes from governments and government-owned entities. China is in the midst of an initial public offering of shares in state-owned ICBC, in what could be the world's biggest IPO ever.
Many of the countries these analysts write about can be upset by strong opinions about their policies, and some nations have highly sensitive subjects. In Thailand, for example, comments about the monarchy can result in accusations of breaches of the country's lese-majesté laws.
In Singapore, too, the government is wary of public criticism -- for example, prohibiting outdoor demonstrations. The nation's ruling-party leaders have brought defamation lawsuits against several opposition politicians and a number of publications. They have cited the need to protect their reputations from slander.
In the most recent instance, Prime Minister Lee and his father, national founder Lee Kuan Yew, sued Review Publishing Co., publisher of The Far Eastern Economic Review, over an interview with local opposition politician Chee Soon Juan that appeared in the magazine's July issue. Review Publishing is owned by Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
Morgan Stanley is among the top investment banks in Singapore. It is second only to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in mergers-and-acquisitions advisory for this year, according to data provider Dealogic Inc. For the two previous years, it was the top adviser on corporate takeovers.
The bespectacled Mr. Xie, who has a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, made a name for himself with a provocative and chatty style that melded personal anecdotes with economic opinions. He has written extensively about the property market in his native Shanghai. He argued that the surge in prices wasn't caused by underlying Chinese growth but was propped up by overseas Chinese investors.
At the Singapore dinner, Mr. Xie wrote in the email, he asked why Singapore had hosted the conference.
"Nobody knew," he wrote. "Some said that probably no one else wanted it. Some guessed that Singapore did a good selling job. I thought that it was a strange choice because Singapore is so far from any action."
Morgan Stanley wouldn't comment on any action taken against the employees who leaked the email, although sending internal documents outside the firm violates the company's code of conduct.
谢国忠离职与电邮内容外泄有关
摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)杰出的亚洲经济学家谢国忠(Andy Xie)本以为在与同事交换看法时可以畅所欲言，但他没想到自己所写的一封内部电子邮件却让他惹火上身。
由于在9月18日所写的一封内部电子邮件中对新加坡政府有不敬言论，谢国忠上周五突然宣布辞职。这封电邮共九段，标题明确指出这封邮件仅供内部传阅。邮件中提到了上个月新加坡总理李显龙(Lee Hsien Loong)在世界银行和货币基金组织年会期间举办的私人宴会。
《华尔街日报》见到并得到摩根士丹利证实的一份电邮复件显示，谢国忠写到：“我认为提问者在争先恐后地称赞新加坡，把新加坡夸作全球化的典范。”但他认为，新加坡的经济成就与“洗钱”活动脱不开关系。他写到：“这些西方人其实都不知道自己在说些什么。”
谢国忠拒绝谈论他从摩根士丹利离职的具体原因。但据一位知情人士透露，谢国忠的离职与电邮有关。
谢国忠在中国广州市接受电话采访时表示，这封电子邮件写得相当仓促，一些措辞也不适合在公开场合出现。
谢国忠说，如果内容将在公开场合发表，措辞就会非常慎重。但他同时表示，不论内容是在私下场合还是公开场合发表，他的观点向来都是一致的。
从谢国忠的遭遇中可以看出，大型投行的分析师、策略师和经济学家在发表意见时有时会冒犯到公司的客户。今年早些时候，四大会计事务所之一的安永(Ernst & Young LLP)就收回了一份先前发布的报告。该报告称，中国实际的坏帐金额是公开披露的5倍，因此，这份报告遭到了中国央行的不点名批评。安永是中国最大的银行中国工商银行(Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd.)的审计人。安永随后表示，对中国金融体系坏帐金额的估计有误。
从此事中还可看出，一封本来仅供内部阅览的电邮可以在迅速之间广为流传。既然谢国忠的这封邮件是供内部阅览的，所以他在邮件中表达的观点不会受到摩根士丹利的监管和法律部门的审查。
摩根士丹利发言人Po-ling Cheung表示，邮件中的看法属于谢国忠的个人意见，并不代表公司的立场；这封邮件是基于个人意见所写的，为的是与一小部分人展开内部讨论。该发言人又表示，摩根士丹利一直支持新加坡以及认同新加坡过往的成就。
目前还不清楚新加坡政府对此邮件是否做出了反应。新加坡新闻通讯及艺术部将记者的问题转交给了新加坡金融管理局(Monetary Authority of Singapore)，但后者拒绝在搞清电邮是否属实之前发表评论。
在2003年监管机构与华尔街几家大型投行就股票研究报告弄虚作假一事达成和解之后，这些大型投行对分析师和研究人员的报告进行了更严格的审查，以确保他们的报告与公司争取投行业务没有牵连。
在亚洲，大部分投资银行业务都来自政府或者政府控制的机构。例如，中国的国有银行工商银行正在准备首次公开募股(IPO)，其股票发行有望成为全球迄今为止规模最大的一笔IPO交易。
分析师的尖锐看法可能让亚洲国家感到不快，而一些话题在某些国家是极为敏感的。例如，在泰国谈论有关君主制的话题可能被扣上叛逆的罪名。
新加坡政府也对公众批评尤为敏感，例如，该国禁止户外的示威活动。该国的执政党领袖已经对一些反对党政客和一系列出版物提出了诽谤指控。他们表示，有必要保护名声免受诽谤的玷污。
不久前，李显龙及其父李光耀将《远东经济评论》的出版商Review Publishing Co.告上法庭，起因便是7月份的《远东经济评论》刊载了一篇采访新加坡反对党政治家徐顺全(Chee Soon Juan)的文章。Review Publishing Co.是道琼斯公司(Dow Jones & Co.)的下属企业。
摩根士丹利在新加坡是数一数二的投资银行。根据Dealogic Inc.提供的资料，就为并购交易提供咨询这项业务而言，摩根士丹利在新加坡的地位仅次于高盛(Goldman Sachs Group Inc.)。在过去2年间，摩根士丹利在为企业并购提供咨询方面更是排在第一位。
从麻省理工学院获得经济学博士学位的谢国忠向来言辞犀利，喜欢把个人的见解与对经济问题的看法交织在一起。他曾经写了很多关于上海房地产市场的文章，用他的话说，上海房价飞涨并非中国经济增长的结果，而是缘于海外华人投资者的推动。
谢国忠在那封电子邮件中写到，在李显龙举办的那次晚宴上，他曾询问新加坡主办世界银行和国际货币基金组织年会是出于什么想法。
他写到，没人知道答案，有些人说或许是因为其他国家都不想承接这次会议，还有人猜测新加坡是想借这次会议来提升本国的形象。但他认为这是一个令人不解的决定，因为目前为止新加坡在这方面做得很不怎么样。
摩根士丹利不肯透露对把这封信公之于众的内部人士会怎样处罚，但将公司内部文件泄漏出去确实违背了该公司的行为准则。
Kate Linebaugh
