Morgan Stanley has struck a deal to buy EquityZen, a trading platform for shares in private companies. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Launched in 2013, EquityZen acts as a marketplace for pre-IPO investments, connecting shareholders of private companies with accredited investors. It has around 800,000 registered users and has processed over 49,000 transactions across more than 450 private companies.
Morgan Stanley says the acquisition boosts its private markets ecosystem, enabling it to provide a full suite of services to private companies and their shareholders, including cap table solutions, tender and liquidity programmes, direct and co-investment opportunities, and secondary trading.
EquityZen’s issuer-aligned model will support the Wall Street giant's efforts to deepen relationships with private companies while also giving its wealth clients increased access to private shares.
Jed Finn, head, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, says: “This announcement comes at a critical time in the development of the private markets ecosystem. The combination of EquityZen with Morgan Stanley will uniquely address client needs as companies stay private longer, such as delivering liquidity solutions for their employees and early investors in a seamless yet controlled process of their own design.
"With EquityZen, we combine our cap table management solutions with a private shares marketplace to deliver end-to-end solutions to our private market company clients.”
The deal comes shortly after Morgan Stanley expanded its partnership with private capital software platform Carta, for whom the bank is the exclusive US equity management and workplace solution platform for late-stage private companies going public.