Its true, big corporate wall street banks like MS are expert liars. The fatcat upper MD echelons have too much power and are utterly biased and selfish. Some mangers might pick layoffs out of vengeance & power tripping abuse.
Others would cut regarding costs (eg. fire all highly paid staff,, then replace them with even more cheaper consultants & India/Philippines/South Asia offshore) They will make up any numbers or excuses to fire and layoff any staff anytime they want.
Only those with direct relationship to the upper echelon elite class shall keep their job with high salary. Welcome to wall street, where nepotism corruption & greed rules the day, money is all that matters; ethics & fairness & meritocracy have no place. Remember this is not the first wave of layoff in recent years, there have been many many layoffs at Morgan Stanley for every single year since Brexit started.