Morgan Stanley (AMEX:MWD) became the third top investment bank in a month to raise capital from a sovereign wealth fund after announcing higher than expected writedowns of $9.4bn, due largely to subprime related losses.

John Mack, chairman and chief executive, said the $5bn capital injection from China Investment Corporation would bolster its already strong balance sheet and strengthen its deep ties in China. It becomes the second Wall Street bank - after Bear Stearns (NYSE:BSC) - to turn to China for help.

China's newly formed sovereign wealth fund, which earlier this year paid $3bn for 10 per cent of Blackstone, the US private equity group, will get a stake of up to 9.9 per cent in Morgan Stanley.

Morgan Stanley said it did not foresee any political or regulatory concerns about the investment.

The deal underlines the growing importance of sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia, and their increasingly bold moves to take advantage of the need for capital among western financial institutions.

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Citigroup (NYSE:C) was backed to the tune of $7.5bn by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority while UBS (NYSE:UBS) took nearly $10bn from the Government of Singapore Investment Corp.

Mr Mack said the writedowns were "deeply disappointing".

"Ultimately, accountability for our results rests with me, and I believe in pay for performance, so I've told our compensation committee that I will not accept a bonus for 2007."

The other three investment banks that have suffered losses of this scale - UBS, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch - have all lost their chief executives.

The losses were largely related to one proprietary trading bet against subprime which went disastrously wrong.

Colm Kelleher, chief financial officer, said there was a definable chain of command and people had been held accountable. "This was an isolated event. You can't hold the CEO accountable for every single trade that is done."

Another senior executive said there was an important difference between Morgan Stanley and other troubled banks such as Citigroup and UBS. "John has unbelievable support in the firm. He is not perceived to have failed other than by not choosing the right people and maybe sticking by them for too long."

Mr Mack said the group would be "much more cautious on some of these larger risks" at least until his overhaul of risk management had bedded down. "We were sprinting and we will be kind of jogging for a while."

The total writedowns of $9.4bn, of which almost $8bn was from the bad subprime bet, left Morgan Stanley with a $3.6bn loss in the fourth quarter.

Mr Mack said most of the rest of the group had a very good year. There were record results from investment banking, equities and asset management while wealth management profits more than doubled to $1.2bn.

For the year, income fell 60 per cent to $2.56bn but the pay bill rose 18 per cent to $16.6bn.