Morgan Stanley Appoints Sheena Shah to Lead New Crypto Research Team

As Wall Street continues its drive into digital assets, Morgan Stanley has announced that Sheena Shah will manage a new team that will examine cryptocurrencies.

According to Bloomberg, Shah will be the main analyst, and her team will investigate the impact of cryptocurrencies on both equities and fixed income around the world. She'll be located in London and report to James Faucette and locally to Adam Wood, who lead Morgan Stanley’s fintech and payments research teams in the U.S. and Europe, respectively.

The memo from Morgan Stanley's David Adelman, Juliet Estridge, and Vishy Tirupattur stated, "The introduction of dedicated crypto research is in acknowledgment of the growing importance of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets in global markets."

The decision comes as the country's largest banks seek new methods to enter the volatile world of cryptocurrencies. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have started offering crypto-futures trading, while Bank of America Corp. established its own cryptocurrency research team earlier this year.

According to the memo, Shah is presently the head of Group of 10 foreign exchange strategies for Europe and has already contributed to Morgan Stanley's cryptocurrency study.