John Mack, the tough-talking boss of Morgan Stanley, made a surprise confession today: he likes regulators.

The chief executive of the Wall Street giant said he welcomed the increased regulation that has been in place since the financial crisis.

"We have probably 15 to 20 Fed regulators in our building 24 hours a day," Mack said yesterday at the "Covering the Crisis" panel discussion hosted by Bloomberg News and Vanity Fair in New York.

"They question everything we do. I've never been regulated like that before. Someone said to me, 'What do you think of it?' I love it."

The Federal Reserve became the firm's primary regulator when it approved applications by Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley to become bank holding companies in September 2008. The decision gave them access to funds from the central bank after credit seized up following the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings.

Mack said regulators should have been more active before the crisis. He even reached out to them after turning down the chance to finance a highly leveraged deal during the credit boom.

"I missed a piece of business," Mack said he told the regulators. "I can live with that, but as soon as I hung up the phone someone else put up 10 times leverage.

"We cannot control ourselves. You have to step in and control the street."