Morgan Stanley reduces risky fixed-income assets by 5 percent

Morgan Stanley reduced its fixed-income risk-weighted assets by 5 percent in the first quarter, Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said on Thursday.

The Wall Street bank had $199 billion of those assets according to Basel 3 capital measurements as of March 31, down from $210 billion in the prior quarter, Porat said in an interview.

Morgan Stanley is working toward a goal of having less than $180 billion of risk-weighted fixed-income assets by 2015 in order to free up capital.

(Reporting by Lauren Tara LaCapra, Editing by Franklin Paul)