London, 14 January 2008 - Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) has launched its latest tranche of 100% capital protected structured products - the FTSE Protected Growth Plan 27, the FTSE Capital Plus Plan 16, and the Asia (ex. Japan) Protected Growth Plan 8.
The plans offer the growth potential of UK and Asian stock markets without some of the risks associated with direct equity investment. The capital protection for the plans is provided by securities issued by Morgan Stanley, rated A by Standard & Poor's.
A recent survey of financial advisers, conducted by Morgan Stanley, showed that capital protection is the most important consideration when recommending structured products to clients (32.2%), closely followed by credit rating (30.0%) and participation (26.2%).
The new products reflect Morgan Stanley's extensive skills in providing innovative capital protected investment solutions to UK investors.
The Protected Growth Plans, which access UK equity and Asia (excluding Japan) indices, offer investors the opportunity to achieve a high fixed amount of growth and exit from the plans early, should markets recover slightly (10%) over three years. Otherwise, the plans continue to maturity, when investors receive the 100% return of their capital plus competitive participation in any increase in the underlying indices.
Alternatively, the FTSE Capital Plus Plan would suit investors with a more cautious view of the direction of UK equity markets over a six year investment horizon. Investors receive a minimum return of 21% regardless of how the market performs, and also retain the potential to participate in any gains above this minimum level.
All plans are available for direct investment, SIPP/SSAS investors, ISA investments for 2008/2009, transfers of existing ISAs and discretionary investment. The minimum investment amount is £3,000.
Marc Chamberlain, Morgan Stanley Executive Director, Structured Products, comments:
"We recently completed a survey of financial advisers, asking what product features were important to their clients in the current environment. We have launched this range of products with this feedback in mind, providing an attractive combination of capital protection and participation. Understandably, many investors remain nervous about the markets so we are confident that our latest capital protected plans will offer advisers some much-needed diversity of risk and reward options for their clients."