Morgan Stanley drops Smith Barney name Morgan Stanley has officially dropped the Smith Barney name from its wealth management business, making the former Citigroup brokerage the latest in a string of well-known financial brands to have disappeared since the financial crisis. The business, which claims 17,000 financial advisers in 740 locations, will now be known as "Morgan Stanley Wealth Management," the bank said in a statement on Tuesday. The name change marks a milestone in Morgan Stanley's attempts to reinvent itself. The bank agreed to buy Smith Barney from Citi during the depths of the financial crisis, and has spent about three years buying up additional stakes in the unit and integrating the two brokerage businesses into a single group. But the name change also means that Smith Barney, which traces its roots to the 1800s and became familiar to many US consumers through its television advertising, will be the latest in a series of financial names to fade into history. Morgan Stanley dropped Dean Witter, its old brokerage business, while Citigroup killed off Salomon Brothers in 2003, following a series of financial scandals. Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns both went belly up during the crisis. An emphasis on retail broking and wealth management, with its stable revenues and financial regulation-friendly features, is now a centrepiece of the efforts by James Gorman, Morgan Stanley chief executive, to transform the company. "As we move under one name, we are culminating a three-year effort to integrate two outstanding franchises," Mr Gorman said in the statement. Going forward, we remain focused on being the world's premier wealth management group. That integration has not always run smoothly. A number of brokers have complained that the business's new trading platform, which replaced the two separate systems that were used at Morgan Stanley and Smith Barney previously, has been beset by glitches or lacks some of the functions they are used to. Senior Morgan Stanley executives, including Greg Fleming, head of the brokerage business, have been visiting with financial advisers to help sooth tensions over the new platform in recent weeks. On Monday, in an internal memo, Mr Fleming and Mr Gorman urged brokers to "leverage" the renaming of the business with their clients. Citi said earlier this month that it would have to take a $2.9bn hit on the sale of its remaining 49 per cent stake in Smith Barney. Morgan Stanley and Citi agreed a $13.5bn valuation of the entire business after months of wrangling and negotiations.