MORGAN STANLEY CEO: 'From our perspective ... there's nothing good about Brexit'

Andrew Burton/Getty

Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman has a blunt assessment on Brexit.

Speaking at the Bloomberg The Year Ahead conference, he said that for the financial sector, there's "nothing good" about the UK's decision to leave the European Union.

He said

"From our perspective, just narrowly from the financial sector and from our institution, there's nothing good about Brexit. We love the rule of law in England, our folks like working in London. You have all the infrastructure - the pipes, the plumbing ... it's all there. We're going to have to have our headquarters in Europe."

"None of this is good. We're going to have to move employees and their families from London to other places. And we're trying to minimize the absolute number of people we have to do that with."

He added that Brexit would have a disproportionate impact on the trading business, asking whether trading businesses in London might be moved to Frankfurt, Paris, New York, Hong Kong or Tokyo.

"I think it's going to open the door of having people looking at why they're placed geographically where they're placed," he said.

He said that New York stood to benefit from this shift, due to the infrastructure already in place and time zone advantages.

"I'm not saying it's going to be large scale … but on the margin, the assumption that everything will now move to another European country - it's not necessarily the case."

More to follow