Morgan Stanley employees accidentally sent an internal document containing information on more than 100 investment banking client deals out via email, exposing details of the bank's pending transactions. The document listed companies preparing to offer IPOs in China, South Korea and India, mostly in Asia, as well as in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It also named the private equity and pension funds backing these companies, along with deals that had been put on hold. Sources said the document listing the deals was emailed this week to some clients by Mohamed Atmani, head of Financial Sponsors for the Asia-Pacific region in the investment banking division, before he tried to recall the email. An Instagram account was also found to have posted a blurred copy of the document. Atmani had intended to send a version prepared for clients, which was mostly general updates on the private equity business and recent transactions, but instead accidentally sent the internal version, some of which contained information that could be highly material to share prices. Morgan Stanley said in a statement that it places the utmost importance on protecting client confidentiality and took immediate action to address the inadvertent disclosure, and that it continues to coordinate with the relevant parties. The incident is a damaging mistake for Morgan Stanley, long one of the top securities underwriters in the Hong Kong stock market and a mergers and acquisitions adviser in Asia. The leak of information about upcoming share offerings could anger clients doing block trades, especially with the details disclosed in advance, which could pressure share prices as investors learn ahead of time and anticipate additional stock coming to market, potentially leaving sellers with less proceeds and making the transactions harder for the bank to carry out.
Morgan StanleyMorgan Stanley accidentally leaked confidential details of over 100 pending IPO and M&A client deals, a damaging confidentiality breach that could anger clients and harm its underwriting/advisory business.
