Morgan Stanley’s Latest Deal Highlights Wall Street’s Existential Bet on Private Markets

Wall Street is increasingly eyeing private markets. Above, Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick. (Paul Yeung/Bloomberg)

Key Points

• Morgan Stanley is acquiring EquityZen, a platform for trading shares of privately held companies, for an undisclosed amount.
• The acquisition enhances Morgan Stanley’s private markets offerings and provides new access for its wealth-management clients and employees.
• The deal, set to close in early 2026, is the first acquisition under CEO Ted Pick, who started in 2024.

Morgan Stanley is acquiring a firm that operates a well-known platform for trading shares of privately held companies such as Plaid, OpenAI, and ByteDance, the latest sign that banks and asset managers are looking beyond the shrinking public markets for growth.

The bank is buying EquityZen, a 50-person firm founded in 2013, for an undisclosed amount, the companies said Wednesday. Morgan Stanley is, in essence, buying a larger position in the vast private markets ecosystem where Wall Street is vying for more access and exposure as fast-growing companies shun public markets for longer periods.

EquityZen, led by Chief Executive Officer Atish Davda and Chief Strategy Officer Phil Haslett, the co-founders, promotes itself as a way to connect investors seeking private assets with shareholders of private companies.

Those shareholders are often start-up employees seeking to capitalize on their equity compensation by unloading shares. That pool has expanded rapidly in recent years as employers grow and attract funding and hefty valuations without going public.

Risks dog private markets as they expand. Fund managers aggressively push products for individual investors under the banner of “democratizing” investments like private equity and private credit. Uniform, widely available data on private market performance is lacking, and investors debate private assets’ valuations.

But firms are stepping in as they build their own databases and use them for an edge, a dynamic on display when BlackRock acquired the private markets research provider Preqin for $3.2 billion last year. EquityZen says it uses proprietary data and research to give shareholders using the platform the real-time value of their equity holdings.

The deal enhances Morgan Stanley’s private markets offerings, RBC Capital Markets analyst Gerard Cassidy said. EquityZen’s so-called issuer-aligned model—where it seeks companies’ approval before executing a sale of their shares—will support the bank’s “efforts to deepen relationships with private companies,” Cassidy wrote.

Morgan Stanley’s acquisition is as much a bet on its dominant wealth-management business as it is on investing in private markets.

The firm’s financial advisors will gain new access to privately held firms for clients, while the division’s unit that caters to other employers’ well-paid workforces, known as Morgan Stanley at Work, will get access to additional options for liquidity.

Last month, EquityZen said it hired Morgan Stanley’s former head of private market transactions for wealth management as its new head of capital markets.

The deal is set to close in early 2026 and marks Morgan Stanley’s first acquisition under CEO Ted Pick, who took over at the start of 2024.

Morgan Stanley’s shares rose 0.1% Wednesday. The S&P 500 was up 0.2%. Morgan Stanley stock is up 32% this year, outperforming the broader market.

Write to Rebecca Ungarino at rebecca.ungarino@barrons.com