Five weeks after Morgan Stanley announced it planned to buy discount broker E-Trade for US$13 billion, the Justice Department’s antitrust unit has approved the deal, according to a Bloomberg report that cited a person familiar with the matter.
The E-Trade merger could bring some US$360 billion of client assets to Morgan Stanley’s US$2.7 trillion. (Both figures were reported at year-end 2019, so the current amounts are likely lower due to the market’s recent decline.) A Morgan Stanley spokesperson declined to comment on the report.
The news comes about 10 days after the Justice Department announced that, due to the coronavirus and its impact on government operations, firms involved with mergers and acquisitions should add 30 days to their “deal timing agreements.”
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