Did shamed Morgan Stanley MD Pawan Passi earn over $2.5m a year in bonuses?

efinancialcareers.com:

Pawan Passi is no longer in the room, and he will not be coming back for a while.

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Having lost his job at Morgan Stanley after 12 years in December 2022, and then been charged with fraud and fined $250k by the SEC (payable within 14 days) last Friday, Passi is now 'barred from association with any broker, dealer, investment adviser, municipal securities dealer, municipal advisor, transfer agent, or nationally recognized statistical rating organization' for at least a year. He's also 'barred from participating in any offering of a penny stock,' although he is supposed to, 'work regularly at a lawful occupation and/or regularly attend school.'

What did 40 year-old Passi do to deserve this? FT Alphaville has a pretty good dissection of his misdemeanors, written by Craig Coben, the former global head of equity capital markets at Bank of America. In the words of Coben, the comportment of the equity syndicate desk at Morgan Stanley during Passi's time at its helm was «as shameless and it is shameful.» The SEC's own documents detail how, between at least June 2018 to August 2021, Passi deliberately leaked information about impending Morgan Stanley block trades to investors (including a Hong Kong hedge fund) so that investors could profit. He lied to colleagues in the process. 

There are signs that Morgan Stanley rewarded him handsomely for his ill-gotten gains. TheJustice Department says Passi's had $7.4m in bonus compensation clawed back by the bank. Given that clawbacks typically affect deferrals and that deferrals at Morgan Stanley are typically spread over three years, the implication is that Passi received that amount in deferred bonuses alone in the three years preceding