Morgan Stanley Finds Sources for Lost E-Mails

Morgan Stanley said it might be able to recover e-mails related to its role in the Wall Street stock research scandal and other legal issues that it previously said had been destroyed in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

In letters sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission and attorneys representing individual investors’ cases against the Wall Street firm, lawyers for Morgan Stanley said the company had found some new sources of information that could contain recoverable e-mails. It’s unclear what the sources of the e-mail are.

The potential evidence relates to the company’s retail brokerage unit, which had been housed at the World Trade Center. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Morgan Stanley has been involved in scores of arbitration cases, regulatory settlements and legal judgments in which it said it couldn’t produce certain e-mail evidence.

The e-mail sources were discovered in an internal review of e-mail retention related to a fraud case brought against Morgan Stanley by financier Ronald Perelman, people close to the investigation told Dow Jones Newswires.

Perelman is suing Morgan Stanley for $2.7 billion, alleging that the investment bank knew of accounting irregularities at appliance maker Sunbeam Products Inc. but hid them to facilitate Sunbeam’s purchase of Perelman’s camping equipment company, Coleman Co., in 1998. Sunbeam and Coleman are now subsidiaries of Jarden Corp.