A sprawling US probe

Inquiry launched: People passing by the Morgan Stanley headquarters in New York. Block trading has grown increasingly competitive, and it’s all the more difficult when markets sell off. — Bloomberg

EVER since his arrival after university in 2004, Pawan Passi has worked the phones inside Morgan Stanley, rising to become a chief communicator with investors buying and selling big blocks of stock, a business the bank dominates on Wall Street.

Then in November, his chair suddenly went empty at Morgan Stanley’s headquarters overlooking Times Square, and the whispers began spreading. The bank had put Passi on leave. The Feds were poking around.