The two bankers - Celicia Ong, an equity saleswoman in Singapore, and Hani Abuali, a proprietary trader in Hong Kong - were asked to resign after they forwarded the email message, according to three people, who asked not to be identified because the information is confidential.

The email message was marked "internal" and should not have been distributed outside the bank, according to these people. Ong's clients included the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, according to these people.

The corporation has placed more than $30 billion of state assets with fund management companies.

Xie left Morgan Stanley on Sept 29 after he circulated unsubtantiated comments critical of Singapore.

"We do not wish to comment," a corporation spokeswoman, Loh Wei Ling, said Thursday when asked about the e-mail message. Morgan Stanley does not comment on personnel issues, a spokeswoman, Cheung Po-ling, said by telephone from Hong Kong.

The departures were reported Wednesday by IFR Asia, a capital markets news service, which said the two bankers' resignations would be effective in January to ensure they receive their bonuses, citing a person it did not identify.

Morgan Stanley ranks second as adviser on mergers involving Singapore companies this year, handling $6.5 billion of transactions, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

It advised Temasek Holdings, the Singapore government's investment company, in the purchase of a 9.9 percent stake in the Indian company Tata Teleservices.

But Morgan Stanley, the No 4 arranger of stock sales in Asia outside Japan, has not underwritten a Singapore deal this year, Bloomberg data show.

Xie, a Shanghai-born economist who worked at Morgan Stanley for nine years, sent an email to his colleagues after attending the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings last month in Singapore.

He questioned why Singapore was chosen as host of the conference and said delegates "were competing with each other to praise Singapore as the success story of globalization."

Singapore's economy is recovering from three recessions since the 1997 Asian financial crisis and is expecting growth of as much as 7.5 percent this year. It is grappling with growing competition from China and India, where labor costs are less than a quarter of those in Singapore.

The Singapore government, which is ending a four-decade ban on casinos, plans to triple tourism revenue to $19 billion and double visitors to 17 million by 2015.

Genting, the largest gambling operator in Asia by market value, Kerzner International and Eighth Wonder submitted bids Wednesday to build Singapore's second casino on the island of Sentosa.

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