US in­vest­ment bank Mor­gan Stan­ley has re­port­ed a net loss of US$1 bil­lion for the three months to the end of Sep­tem­ber. It had made a prof­it of US$2.2 bil­lion in the same quar­ter the pre­vi­ous year.

But much of the re­port­ed loss was due to ac­count­ing changes linked to the chang­ing val­ues of the debt it holds.

Ex­clud­ing the ef­fect of those ac­count­ing changes, Mor­gan Stan­ley made a prof­it of US$561 mil­lion, up from US$68 mil­lion in the com­pa­ra­ble pe­ri­od of 2011. Al­so ex­clud­ing those charges, rev­enue rose 18 per cent to US$7.5 bil­lion, which was bet­ter than had been ex­pect­ed.

Mor­gan Stan­ley al­so con­firmed that it had com­plet­ed the pur­chase of an ad­di­tion­al 14 per cent stake in the Mor­gan Stan­ley Smith Bar­ney joint ven­ture from Cit­i­group, tak­ing its hold­ing up to 65 per cent. (BBC)