A one-third rise in revenues from fixed income and commodities helped power an eight-fold increase in underlying pre-tax profits at Morgan Stanley’s institutional securities unit in the third quarter.

Institutional securities profits, excluding the effects of debt valuation adjustments, or fluctuations in the value of the bank's own credit spreads, surged from just $37m in the third quarter last year to $345m in the same period this year, Morgan Stanley said in its results statement today.