POWER ON WALL STREET RARE COMMODITY FOR WOMEN : ELAINE LA ROCHE'S WORK AT MORGAN STANLEY PUTS HER AMONG THE ELITE.

Byline: Peter Truell The New York Times

When Morgan Stanley & Co. needed to slice tens of millions of dollars in costs, a task neither pleasant nor the least bit glamorous, it turned to Elaine La Roche.

La Roche, 47, has gotten the job done briskly. She cut travel expenses by declaring expensive hotels like the St. Regis in New York off-limits. John J. Mack, Morgan Stanley's president, found himself flying coach on a recent trip to Atlanta.

She has trimmed the corporate-services staff by about 160 jobs, including the firm's library staff, leaving some investment bankers growling about having to do much more of their own research. She has also negotiated better terms for many of the services the company uses.

The nature of the assignment and her brusque style - she is legendary for raising her voice and for an impatience with peers and subordinates - has made La Roche many enemies.

But her energetic and unflinching approach to such assignments has helped Morgan Stanley raise its profits by millions of dollars, and earned enthusiastic plaudits from Mack and Richard B. Fisher, the company's chairman and chief executive.

Now a managing director and a member of the firm's kitchen cabinet, La Roche is the highest-ranking woman at Morgan Stanley. That places her among the most powerful women on Wall Street. And this year she became the first woman to chair the Public Securities Association, the bond market trade association.

As a business, the securities industry is notoriously slow to promote women. Fewer than 10 percent of the partners and managing directors at Wall Street's leading firms are women.

And as in many industries, a large percentage of the women who have climbed the highest have used the ladder taken by La Roche: the less-coveted administrative, management and research jobs. The more glamorous and high-paying jobs, such as investment banking and trading, are even more of a male preserve than Wall Street itself.

At Goldman, Sachs & Co., where just nine of 173 partners are women, the top-ranking women are Nomi P. Ghez in equity research, Robin Neustein in administration and Leslie C. Tortora in information technology administration and recruitment.

Among the highest-ranking women at Merrill Lynch & Co. are Theresa Lang, the company's treasurer and senior vice president, and Rosemary T. Berkery, senior vice president and assistant general counsel, a company spokesman said.

``It is definitely a curious and consistent pattern, and it is not necessarily always by choice,'' La Roche said.

Questioned about this, half a dozen executives atop Wall Street firms - all insisting on anonymity - said that frequent travel on short notice, and the desire of female executives to raise children, often made it more difficult for women to meet the requirements for the demanding plum assignments.

La Roche and many other women executives reject such claims as a convenient defense of the status quo. The fact is that many men at the top of Wall Street firms still feel more comfortable having men in certain powerful jobs. Virtually no women appear in the proxy documents in which Wall Street firms list their key officers.

For her part, La Roche refused to say how much money she makes, but conceded that she was exceedingly well paid. Managing directors at Morgan Stanley commonly make a few million dollars a year, often with a chunk of that in company shares.

How La Roche has succeeded is a familiar story for many women at her level.

Like many men, she hitched her star to the right person - Mack, a former Duke University football star who was working his way up Wall Street as a bond trader and is now Fisher's heir apparent. She accepted and completed tough, unpopular assignments - sometimes taking the heat for her bosses.

``When there's a crisis, and when there's a problem here, people call her,'' said Thomas R. Nides, a principal at Morgan Stanley. ``She's a can-do person; she makes a list and checks things off as she does them.''

And La Roche showed time and again that she was indefatigable. As one example, within weeks of having a baby at the age of 45, she was back at work. Mack noted that most of the top women who have given birth while at Morgan have not taken the entire leave allowed them, though he said he would have been pleased if they had.

La Roche now has charge of half a billion dollars worth of Morgan Stanley purchases, and also prepares the agenda for meetings of the firm's powerful management and operating committees.

In these roles, she can be something of a trouble-shooter; recently, she flew off to Beijing to solve difficulties at the firm's joint-venture investment bank there.

With watchwords like ``You lie, you die!'' and her familiar exhortation to be ``tough as nails'' but have a ``heart of gold,'' La Roche strikes fear in some colleagues.

Indeed, some at Morgan Stanley say she is too tough, especially with subordinates, while admitting that male executives may sometimes use the same approach.

``Her style is to manage through fear, intimidation and knee-jerk reaction,'' said Christina P. Linehan, a former administrative coordinator who worked for La Roche for almost three years.

Linehan said La Roche slammed doors and telephones and used profane and abusive language with her colleagues and juniors. She said she had rarely witnessed such behavior from other managers, male or female.

La Roche readily admitted she slammed telephones and cursed when she worked on Morgan's trading floor. ``Trading-room culture and intensity is not gender specific,'' she said. ``It's OK for a guy to slam the phone down on the trading floor.''

But she added, ``Since I left the trading floor I have tempered my colorful language,'' and behavior.

In any case, La Roche said her style should not be surprising, particularly in a business as competitive and risky as the securities industry. ``It strikes me that Wall Street is a little bit like boxing,'' she said. ``Quite frankly, to survive you have to know how to give a good punch as well as how to take one.''

CAPTION(S):

10 Photos, Chart

Chart: Top Women on Wall STreet

At none of these big firms on Wall Street do women comprise more than 11 percent of the top tier known as managing directors. Here are nine top Wall Street firms, and a representative executive at each one. Each figure represents 30 managing directors (or executives of comparable rank).

The New York Times

Photo: (1) Theresa Lang Merrill Lynch Company treasurer

(2) Carolyn Moses Lehman Brothers Head of global equity research

(3) Wendy L. de Monchaux Bear Stearns Head of derivatives and fixed-income

(4) Robin Neustein Goldman, Sachs Chief of staff and adviser to the chairman

(5) Rebecca Barfield Johnson CS First Boston Helps run equity research

(6) Denise M. Cumby-Kelly Salomon Brothers Head of Government bond products

(7) Jessica M. Bibliowicz Smith Barney Head of $75 billion mutual fund business

(8) Zoe Cruz Morgan Stanley Co-head of foreign exchange

(9) Regina Dolan Paine Webber Chief financial officer

(10) As a managing director with Morgan Stanley & Co., Elaine La Roche is among the most powerful women on Wall Street

The New York Times