Bank of America leading Morgan Stanley in brokerage wars?

Who's leading the brokerage wars? At the moment, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (NYSE: BAC) seems to be getting the best of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (NYSE: MS).

Here's Bloomberg's quick take: Bank of America Merrill Lynch, headed by Sallie Krawcheck, produced $315 million more profit from its brokerage in the first half of 2010 than Morgan Stanley, and it did so with 2,900 fewer financial advisers.

In addition, Bank of America Merrill Lynch's pretax profit margin of 16.7 percent handily beat Morgan Stanley Smith Barney's 7.8 percent, reports Bloomberg.

The issue here is whether Bank of America's consumer banking heft offers some advantages that Morgan Stanley cannot hope to overcome.

It would appear that Bank of America is finding some cross-sell synergies. It has been aggressive in pushing large mortgages and other bank products to brokerage customers and it apparently has 800 banks whose job is to get brokerage customers to move  assets to the bank.

Morgan Stanley has validated the value of that by hiring 100 bankers to offer similar products to brokerage clients. The unit will be run by former Wachovia executive Cece Stewart.

For more:
- here's the article

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