Elon Musk’s go-to banker is back in action for the SpaceX IPO

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Michael Grimes, the longtime Morgan Stanley rainmaker, spent years laying the groundwork for his bank to land a role leading the initial public offering of Elon Musk’s rocket maker SpaceX. But by the time Musk finally decided to take SpaceX public, Grimes was working in the Commerce Department, having followed the billionaire to Washington, D.C.

Grimes found himself watching from afar as former colleagues pitched for roles on what could be the biggest IPO of all time. This week, Grimes put himself back in the middle of the action—and in line to reap millions of dollars of fees. Morgan Stanley said Monday he is rejoining the bank as chairman of investment banking, a promotion from his previous role as the head of global technology investment banking, according to an internal memo the Financial Times reported on earlier.

SpaceX has long been considered a golden goose by IPO bankers. It skyrocketed to a $1.25 trillion valuation last week when it merged with Musk’s artificial-intelligence startup, xAI. The company is expected to raise tens of billions of dollars in an offering to finance plans to launch data centers in space and colonize the moon.

If SpaceX were to raise the $40 billion some close to the company envision, the dozen or so banks on the IPO could split fees of roughly $400 million, bankers estimate, assuming the fee structure is similar to previous mega-offerings. The largest cuts would go to the four lead banks—expected to be Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs—and the individual bankers such as Grimes who helped land the work. Many on Wall Street had been wondering whether Grimes would be content remaining in government and forgoing the