Mitchell Merin

Mitchell M. Merin, President and Chief Operating Officer of Morgan Stanley Investment Management (MSIM) decided to retire from the Firm September 13 2005. Mr. Merin, 52, has been with the Firm for more than two decades and for the past seven years has led MSIM. Mr. Merin has held a wide variety of executive positions for more than two decades with Morgan Stanley and with Dean Witter, Discover & Co., which merged with Morgan Stanley in 1997. At the time of the merger, Mr. Merin was Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer for Dean Witter Discover, and he led its merger transition effort. After the merger he served as President and CEO of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Advisors, the Firm's proprietary asset management business serving individual investors, before assuming his current role in 1998 as head of the combined investment management business for both individual and institutional investors. Mr. Merin joined Sears in 1981 before becoming Senior Vice President and Group Treasurer at Dean Witter in 1986. He subsequently served at Dean Witter as Managing Director of Corporate Finance as well as Executive Vice President and Director of Taxable Fixed Income and Futures, among other roles. He received a bachelor's degree from Trinity College, where he currently serves on the Board of Trustees, and an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management in 1977.