MORGAN STANLEY'S DISCOVERY

By Daniel Kadlec

The picture of two buttoned-down bankers from highfalutin Wall Street power Morgan Stanley smiling and waving their Discover cards would have looked preposterous just five years ago. These are not regular guys. Morgan's chairman, Richard B. Fisher, and CEO, John J. Mack, made $7 million each in 1995. Platinum-card material, wouldn't you say? Don't look for this pair at the self-service pump.

So when the two flashed their Everyman's credit cards for the press last week, somebody should have checked the dates. The cards were so shiny they might have been minted that morning--and not so Fisher and Mack could go on a shopping spree at Sears. No. They had already been shopping in a much bigger store: the stock market. The cards were part of their quarry, a $10 billion merger with Dean Witter Discover that signals an interest in common folks unprecedented at Morgan Stanley since it split from the J.P. Morgan bank in 1935.

Dean Witter, once owned by Sears, has long been the little guy's friend on Wall Street. It has shunned such fancy fads as junk bonds and bankrolling corporate takeovers in favor of the mundane. Morgan Stanley has always considered such "retail" brokerage a pauper's enterprise. It has stuck with raising capital for the world's largest companies and advising them on what to do with same. Individual investors? Phew. Morgan bankers wouldn't soil their wing tips in that mire.

But suddenly the retail business looks good to Morgan, a stunning epiphany. The firm posted a record profit of more than $1 billion last year. Clearly, it's in no trouble. Its newfound interest in little people is unmistakable evidence that individuals wield more clout on Wall Street than ever. There may not be any immediate benefits, but long-term this is very good news. Capital and clout go hand in hand, and the popularity of mutual funds and 401(k)s means regular Joes and Janes are amassing pools of money faster than institutions. Morgan sees that and is doing what it does best: following the cash. Other big outfits such as Salomon Brothers and Goldman Sachs are moving in that direction too.

How much fun it would be if we could tell the blue bloods to stuff it. The elite banks have long cut us out of things like hot, new stock offerings and timely access to news, research and trading. Too bad Dean Witter, in such a strong position that CEO Philip Purcell emerges as the top executive at the combined firm, didn't adopt the stuff-it 'tude for us. Maybe Purcell figures that the price was right and that with commercial banks becoming big players in the brokerage business, he had to act. Or maybe he's hedging his bets. Plenty of people believe traditional retail brokerage is headed for extinction. Plenty also think this merger won't work. Mack denies it, but he's fuming over Purcell's getting the top job. And I'd like to be there the first time a working-stiff broker from Dean Witter tells a millionaire banker from Morgan to set aside 100 shares of a hot new-stock deal for one of his piddling accounts. The culture gap is vast. At Dean Witter, their Discover cards are dull from use--not gleaming tickets to Main Street.

Daniel Kadlec is TIME's Wall Street columnist. Reach him at kadlec@time.com