Morgan Stanley confirmed Thursday that the investment banking giant is buying E*Trade Financial Corp. in a $13 billion deal, reported the Wall Street Journal. This deal marks the biggest takeover by a major US bank since the 2008 crisis.

E*Trade shares jumped 25% before being halted premarket for the news while Morgan Stanley shares fell 3.9%, though it gained 33% in the last 12 months.

Back in April, last year, Bloomberg reported that the anonymous sources have revealed US stock brokerage is planning to allow its customers to trade cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and Ethereum. New York Times crypto-journalist Nathaniel Popper also tweeted,

In the wake of TD Ameritrade quietly opening Bitcoin trading for some of its customers, I was just told that eTrade is preparing to begin offering both Bitcoin and Ether trading to its 5 million or so customers and is just finalizing a third party to actually hold the coins.

— Nathaniel Popper (@nathanielpopper) April 26, 2019

The market was excited about the news and the mass adoption such a move would result in. However, there hasn’t been any progress since then.

With this takeover, Morgan Stanley will reshape the investment bank and firm its stake in managing regular people’s money. This all-stock deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter. This deal, Morgan Stanley said in a statement,

“will significantly increase the scale and breadth of Morgan Stanley's Wealth Management franchise, and positions Morgan Stanley to be an industry leader in Wealth Management across all channels and wealth segments.”

E*Trade has over 5.2 million client accounts with more than $360 billion in retail client assets and will add to 3 million clients of Morgan Stanley that has $2.7 trillion in client assets.

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