Morgan Stanley hired a new tech banker in California. It's too late for what really matters
Morgan Stanley’s Menlo Park office is a pretty cool place. The weather is great, the city is a lovely place to raise a family, and technology banking is booming. Luckily, Morgan Stanley is even adding to the fun with some new hires.
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Software banker Aaron Pine joined Morgan Stanley as a managing director (MD) in its Menlo Park office. He joined the firm from Citi, where he worked for 18 years in San Francisco, and was made an MD in 2020.
Weather aside, Morgan Stanley’s Menlo Park office might be the most exciting place to be in the industry this year. It’s likely to the be the office from which the bank will oversee the public listing of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which will be the largest IPO in history.
Aside from its unique size, the SpaceX IPO will also be uniquely complicated. Aside from being a defence contractor and rocket manufacturer, SpaceX also runs a telecommunications platform (Starlink) and has a multi-centi-billion-dollar AI firm bolted onto it in xAI, which operates Grok. It also owns X, formerly known as Twitter, because why not. There are 21 banks in the syndicate.
Morgan Stanley has been Elon Musk’s go-to investment bank for years. And in February, the firm re-hired Michael Grimes in Menlo Park as chairman of investment banking; Grimes has been called a “Musk whisperer” for his connection to the SpaceX CEO. But it might not be enough: Polymarket has Goldman Sachs pegged to be the lead bank on the SpaceX IPO, after months of Morgan Stanley being in the lead.
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