A few weeks ago, before the recent Omicron spike, James Gorman invited me to lunch, high atop Morgan Stanley’s headquarters, just north of Times Square in Manhattan, for a conversation about his firm, the markets, what’s worrying him these days and when he’ll name his successor. Gorman, the 63-year-old Aussie C.E.O. of the firm, had the sushi. I had a Caesar salad with grilled shrimp. He seemed in fine fettle, and chatty, after a long, challenging, and highly successful year. 

Gorman and I have a little history together. We both graduated from Columbia Business School in the class of 1987, five months before Black Monday wiped out nearly 23 percent of the value on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Having been elected class speaker by my peers, I headed to GE Capital, to finance leveraged buyouts, and then to Lazard, Merrill Lynch and JPMorganChase, as an M&A banker. Gorman, for his part, joined McKinsey, where eventually he became a senior partner. It was an incredible accomplishment for a young man whose father had both grown up in the Outback and been homeschooled until he was a senior.