Aviva PLC Buys 56,541 Shares of Morgan Stanley $MS

Posted by Brian Himes on Jun 12th, 2026

Aviva PLC increased its stake in shares of Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS – Free Report) by 5.7% during the 4th quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The firm owned 1,056,402 shares of the financial services provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 56,541 shares during the quarter. Aviva PLC’s holdings in Morgan Stanley were worth $187,543,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other hedge funds have also modified their holdings of MS. Brighton Jones LLC grew its stake in shares of Morgan Stanley by 10.2% during the fourth quarter. Brighton Jones LLC now owns 12,782 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $1,607,000 after purchasing an additional 1,185 shares during the last quarter. Main Street Financial Solutions LLC grew its stake in shares of Morgan Stanley by 69.0% during the second quarter. Main Street Financial Solutions LLC now owns 8,964 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $1,263,000 after purchasing an additional 3,661 shares during the last quarter. Diversify Advisory Services LLC grew its stake in shares of Morgan Stanley by 90.9% during the second quarter. Diversify Advisory Services LLC now owns 16,148 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $2,378,000 after purchasing an additional 7,688 shares during the last quarter. DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral Genossenschafts Bank Frankfurt am Main grew its stake in shares of Morgan Stanley by 6.3% during the second quarter. DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral Genossenschafts Bank Frankfurt am Main now owns 263,575 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $37,127,000 after purchasing an additional 15,623 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Jupiter Wealth Management LLC grew its stake in shares of Morgan Stanley by 7.8% during the second quarter. Jupiter Wealth Management LLC now owns 52,825 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $7,805,000 after purchasing an additional 3,807 shares during the last quarter. 84.19% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Key Headlines Impacting Morgan Stanley

Here are the key news stories impacting Morgan Stanley this week:

Positive Sentiment: Morgan Stanley is being highlighted as a likely beneficiary of a coming wave of AI-related IPOs, with reports saying the bank could earn significant underwriting, trading, and advisory fees from deals such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX. Barrons AI IPO article
Positive Sentiment: Another report said Morgan Stanley’s leadership is “wide awake” to M&A opportunities, with wealth management and asset management cited as areas for potential inorganic growth, which supports optimism around longer-term expansion. Morgan Stanley M&A opportunities article
Positive Sentiment: The bank also announced it is expanding AI access on its workplace wealth platform, allowing clients’ AI agents to interact with stock-plan tools, a move that could deepen client relationships and improve the digital wealth-management offering. Morgan Stanley AI access article
Neutral Sentiment: Additional commentary on Morgan Stanley’s role in upcoming IPO activity and broader market momentum has kept the stock in focus, but these items are more thematic than directly company-specific. Morgan Stanley IPO realities article

Morgan Stanley Trading Up 2.9%

Shares of NYSE MS opened at $212.74 on Friday. The company’s 50 day simple moving average is $192.77 and its 200 day simple moving average is $180.61. Morgan Stanley has a fifty-two week low of $128.81 and a fifty-two week high of $219.16. The firm has a market capitalization of $335.55 billion, a P/E ratio of 19.27, a P/E/G ratio of 1.55 and a beta of 1.23. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.52, a current ratio of 0.77 and a quick ratio of 0.77.

Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS – Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, April 15th. The financial services provider reported $3.43 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.02 by $0.41. The business had revenue of $20.58 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $19.23 billion. Morgan Stanley had a net margin of 14.65% and a return on equity of 17.70%. Morgan Stanley’s revenue was up 16.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the business posted $2.60 earnings per share. On average, analysts predict that Morgan Stanley will post 11.85 EPS for the current year.

Morgan Stanley Announces Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, May 15th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, April 30th were issued a $1.00 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, April 30th. This represents a $4.00 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.9%. Morgan Stanley’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 36.23%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several analysts have recently commented on MS shares. Zacks Research cut shares of Morgan Stanley from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Wednesday, May 27th. Bank of America increased their price objective on shares of Morgan Stanley from $220.00 to $225.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Thursday, April 16th. Barclays increased their price objective on shares of Morgan Stanley from $219.00 to $230.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Thursday, April 16th. BNP Paribas Exane increased their price objective on shares of Morgan Stanley from $195.00 to $205.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday, April 24th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets increased their price objective on shares of Morgan Stanley from $190.00 to $220.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Monday, April 20th. Twelve investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and twelve have assigned a Hold rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $205.95.

Check Out Our Latest Analysis on Morgan Stanley

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Morgan Stanley news, insider Daniel A. Simkowitz sold 14,690 shares of the stock in a transaction on Friday, April 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $189.24, for a total value of $2,779,935.60. Following the sale, the insider directly owned 365,802 shares in the company, valued at approximately $69,224,370.48. This trade represents a 3.86% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, insider Andrew M. Saperstein sold 51,668 shares of the stock in a transaction on Thursday, April 16th. The stock was sold at an average price of $188.59, for a total transaction of $9,744,068.12. Following the completion of the sale, the insider owned 282,142 shares in the company, valued at approximately $53,209,159.78. This trade represents a 15.48% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Over the last three months, insiders have sold 77,476 shares of company stock worth $14,644,762. Company insiders own 0.17% of the company’s stock.

Morgan Stanley Company Profile

(Free Report)

Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) is a global financial services firm headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1935 by Henry S. Morgan and Harold Stanley, the company provides a broad range of investment banking, securities, wealth management and investment management services to corporations, governments, institutions and individual investors. Leadership has been guided by a senior executive team and board of directors; James P. Gorman has served as the company’s chief executive and chairman in recent years.

The firm’s primary business activities are organized around three principal businesses: Institutional Securities, Wealth Management and Investment Management.