Vikram Pandit a native of Mumbai, India graduated from Columbia University's Engineering School and Business School. He moved on to complete his Ph.D in Finance from Columbia. Vikram joined Morgan Stanley in 1983 as an associate and within seven years became Managing Director.

Vikram Pandit served as the president and chief operating officer of the Institutional Securities and Investment Banking Group (1994-2000) at Morgan Stanley where he was responsible for the overall management of the group and focused on the trading, sales and infrastructure aspects of the business. Then in late 2000, he was handpicked by Purcell to co-run all the firm's trading operations.