`Internal E-mail'

     Singapore is ending a four-decade ban on casinos. The
government plans to triple tourism revenue to $19 billion and
double visitors to 17 million by 2015.
     Officials from the public relations departments of the
Monetary Authority of Singapore and the government's information
service declined to comment on the contents of the e-mail. They
also declined to be identified.
     Morgan Stanley confirmed the contents of the e-mail and
said the New York-based firm doesn't elaborate on the reasons
behind employee departures.
     ``This is an internal e-mail based on personal suppositions
and aimed at stimulating internal debate amongst a small group
of intended recipients,'' Cheung Po-ling, a Hong Kong-based
spokeswoman for the world's largest securities firm by market
value, said in a written statement. ``The e-mail expresses the
views of one individual and does not in any way represent the
views of the firm.''

                        `Strong Supporter'

     ``Morgan Stanley has been a very strong supporter of
Singapore and has a great deal of respect for Singapore's
achievements,'' Cheung said.
     Morgan Stanley ranks sixth among merger advisers in
Singapore this year, handling $1.5 billion of deals, according
to data compiled by Bloomberg. It advised Temasek Holdings Pte.,
the Singapore government's investment company, in its purchase
of a 9.9 percent stake in Mumbai-based Tata Teleservices Ltd. in
March. Morgan Stanley, which ranks third among stock sale
arrangers in Asia outside Japan this year, hasn't underwritten
any deal in Singapore this year, according to Bloomberg data.
     ``I tried to find out why Singapore was chosen to host the
conference,'' Xie wrote in the e-mail. ``Nobody knew. Some said
that probably no one else wanted it. Some guessed that Singapore
did a good selling job. I thought it was a strange choice
because Singapore was so far from any action or the hot topic of
China and India. Mumbai or Shanghai would be a lot more
appropriate.''

                        `Fawning' Guests

     At a dinner party hosted by Singapore Prime Minister Lee
Hsien Loong, ``people fawned him like a prince,'' Xie wrote.
``These Western people didn't know what they were talking
about,'' he wrote, describing the praise for Singapore as
``nauseating pleasantries.''
     Xie declined to comment on his departure when contacted on
his mobile phone on Oct. 2.
     Xie, who said in September that the U.S. economy may fall
into a recession in 2008, worked at the corporate finance
division at Macquarie Bank in Singapore before joining Morgan
Stanley in 1997. He spent five years as an economist with the
World Bank, overseeing the bank's programs in Indonesia and
other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the New
York-based firm's Web site.
     Xie holds a doctorate in economics and a Master's degree in
civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

--Editor: Richardson.