IRISHMAN COLM Kelleher has emerged as the main beneficiary of a management reshuffle at Morgan Stanley by its chief executive James Gorman.

The moves, discussed in a memo sent to employees yesterday, include an expansion of duties for Mr Kelleher, the co-president of institutional securities.

Mr Kelleher (52) will relocate from New York to London, where he will assume responsibility for Europe, the Middle East and Asia, excluding Japan.

The heads of those regions will now report to Mr Kelleher, who also will have direct responsibility of global sales and trading.

Previously, the division heads reported to Walid Chammah. Mr Chammah will remain based in London as chairman of Morgan Stanley International, but will have no operating responsibilities.

The reassignment of duties is considered a promotion for Mr Kelleher, who served as Morgan Stanley’s chief financial officer during the financial crisis and is credited with being part of the team that steered the company through a near-death experience that ended with its conversion into a bank holding company –- a move that enabled it to access emergency loans from the Federal Reserve.

Originally from Bandon in Co Cork, Mr Kelleher is one of nine children.

He spent a large part of his adolescent life in Warrington, England and graduated with an master’s degree in history from Oxford University. His brother Declan is the Irish Ambassador to China.

Before joining Morgan Stanley, he spent four years at Arthur Anderson in London, UK, where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1983.

According to Forbes.com Mr Kelleher was on a salary of $628,476 in 2009, with a bonus in that year of $6.4 million. His total package was $9.497 million.

The reshuffling underlines Morgan Stanley’s desire to focus its expansion efforts in fast-growing emerging markets where rivals such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup already have strong positions.

But it is also a sign of Mr Gorman’s desire to shape the bank’s upper echelons which he inherited from predecessor John Mack. Mr Mack, who is still Morgan Stanley’s chairman, is widely expected to step down in the next few years.

In his memo to employees, Mr Gorman wrote, “These respective roles for Colm, Paul and Walid will ensure that we are leveraging our most experienced leaders in the best way possible to support the growth of our international franchise.”

Paul J Taubman, Mr Kelleher’s counterpart as co-president of institutional securities, will remain in New York, but will now have oversight of Latin America, one of the fastest growing regions for the bank, as well as Japan, where he has played an important role in Morgan Stanley’s securities joint venture with Mitsubishi.

Mr Taubman also will have oversight of the global investment banking and capital markets divisions. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011)