I have some shares that are vesting soon and I wanted to find out the vesting schedule and plan for a sale of company shares. My company has switched from provider to provider and the latest one is Morgan Stanley.
It should be straight forward enough to log on to Morgan Stanley, check my shares, vesting and plan for the sale right? Wrong!
First, Morgan Stanley has multiple websites. How many I’m not sure but I will tell you my story that involves three websites.
Morgan Stanley At Work
The first website I discovered is Morgan Stanley At Work. This website actually holds the shares but there’s not much more that you can do other than “look” at your shares and vesting schedule.
Morgan Stanley Online
Next is Morgan Stanley Online which is where shares from the first site end up after they vest so you can execute trades against them. You can also move the shares to another brokerage account if you want and store or trade them there.
Morgan Stanley – E-trade
Morgan Stanley acquired E-Trade not too long ago and you can view ALL your accounts on E-trade but as far as I know you can’t necessarily trade your shares you can just see them but the information is limited. It’s almost like you get a “peek” at your shares but not much more.
No Tech For Old Men
The explanation I wrote above seems simple and straight forward but it took a few calls to sort out how all of this is supposed to work. Unfortunately my problems with Morgan Stanley don’t stop there because it seems impossible to move money (cash) from Morgan Stanley to E-Trade but you can move money from E-trade to Morgan Stanley for some reason.
If I had a choice, I’d dump Morgan Stanley but I’m held captive by my employer’s choices. I asked the Morgan Stanley rep if there was a way to consolidate all these different accounts and websites and they said no.
I don’t know if this is designed this way for regulatory reasons or to make it extremely difficult for the customer to do anything with their accounts but it’s very frustrating. The whole thing felt like a thimblerig game but what do I know…