High stakes for Smith Barney-Morgan Stanley

When it comes to high profile financial services mergers, the IT integration is often of paramount importance. In some cases, the synergies and savings that were promised to shareholders depend on a smooth transition to an integrated system. 

Smith Barney and Morgan Stanley must integrate in an especially challenging environment, given the economy, budgets and willingness of brokers to defect. Identifying redundancies will be the first challenge. One solution may be for Morgan Stanley, which owns 51 percent, to jettison most of Smith Barney's tech and force them onto its systems in the name of speed and expediency.  Another may be to painstakingly stitch the best of both companies together. Yet another approach may be to start from scratch in certain areas.

For more:
- here's the Wall Street & Technology article

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