Restructuring the Real Estate Business After the Great Financial Crisis?

The 2008 financial crisis was "the most formative period of my career without a doubt," King says. The first lesson he learned: It's leverage that'll kill you, and it's leverage that will take you down. In the early 2000s, Morgan Stanley sought tremendous growth with no guard rails or systems in place to manage its unparalleled growth. And so between high levels of leverage, as well as growth for growth sakes, without all of the constraints around that growth, those two things together can result in catastrophic events like what occurred in 2008 and 2009.