Although it was forced to adopt the technical structure of a bank holding company during the 2008 financial crisis, Morgan Stanley is still primarily an investment house, a leading player on Wall Street for the past 75 years. The firm was spun off from J.P. Morgan’s financial empire in 1935 after the Glass-Steagall Act mandated the separation of commercial banking and investment banking in an effort to end the abuses that led to the stock market crash and the Great Depression.