Dean Witter

Dean Witter Reynolds

Type	Acquired
Industry	Financial Services
Fate	Merged with Morgan Stanley in 1997
Predecessor	Dean Witter & Co. Reynolds & Co.
Founded	1924
Headquarters	New York, New York San Francisco, California
Products	Brokerage
Revenue	$1,132 million (1996)
Net income	$951 million (1996)
Total assets	$17.3 billion
Number of employees	33,084 (12/31/96)

Dean Witter Reynolds was an American stock brokerage and securities firm catering to retail clients. Prior to its acquisition, it was among the largest retail firms in the securities industry with over 9,000 account executives (ranking third in the US in 1996) and was among the largest members of the . The company served over 3.2 million clients primarily in the U.S. Dean Witter provided debt and equity underwriting and brokerage as 420 as mutual funds and other saving and investment products for individual investors. The company's asset management arm, Dean Witter InterCapital, with total assets of $90.0 billion prior to acquisition, was one of the largest asset management operations in the U.S.

In 1997, Dean Witter's parent company Dean Witter, Discover, Inc., which also owned Discover Card, merged with investment banking house Morgan Stanley to form Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. The combined firm later dropped the Dean Witter name. In 2009, the Dean Witter retail operations were transferred to Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, a joint venture with Citigroup.

For many years, the company used the corporate slogan, "We measure success one investor at a time," which was later adopted by Morgan Stanley.

Prior to its merger with Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter Reynolds was a diversified financial services organization that provided a broad range of investment and consumer credit and investment products and services. Dean Witter operated in two lines of business: securities (including investment banking) and credit services and its operations were primarily focused on the U.S.

The following is a summary of the financial results of Dean Witter prior to its merger with Morgan Stanley:

Dean Witter's traditional business was as a full-service securities brokerage. The company maintained a network of over 9,000 account executives. DWR was among the largest members of the and was a member of other major securities, futures and options exchanges. Dean Witter offered a broad range of securities and savings products that were supported by the firm's underwriting and research activities as well as order execution. Closely related to its securities business, Dean Witter provided investment consulting services to individual investors. The firm managed approximately $10.4 billion of assets in its consulting business as of the end of 1996. Within its securities business, Dean Witter focused on three segments: