At a glance
- Vinyl raised $20 million in Series A funding earlier this year.
- For Morgan Stanley advisors whose clients include corporate stock-plan sponsors and their employees, the change touches the handoff when a company lists.
- Scott Whatley, head of Morgan Stanley at Work, said the deal removes friction for workplace clients, their employees and investors.
Morgan Stanley agreed to buy Vinyl Equity, a fintech founded in 2022, to take share transfers between companies and their shareholders in-house.
Deal terms were not disclosed, though integrating Vinyl will cost $65 million over a couple of years, a Morgan Stanley spokesperson said. Vinyl raised $20 million in Series A funding earlier this year. The bank reported $1.96 trillion in regulatory assets across about 2.7 million accounts and 29,481 employees in its Nov. 4 Form ADV, flat with its Aug. 16 filing, according to SEC filings.
For Morgan Stanley advisors whose clients include corporate stock-plan sponsors and their employees, the change touches the handoff when a company lists. Moving shares between a newly public company and its shareholders is particularly complex, Morgan Stanley said, and until now it required an outside party. Keeping that step inside means one fewer vendor holding participant data, Jed Finn, Morgan Stanley's head of wealth management, said. "Clients are asking for it," he said. "Given everything that's going on around client data protection, cyber security and risk, they want to keep everything within the four walls of Morgan Stanley."
Scott Whatley, head of Morgan Stanley at Work, said the deal removes friction for workplace clients, their employees and investors. The workplace unit, which has thousands of corporate clients, counts more than 70% of the top 100 unicorns among them, executives have said.
The Vinyl deal is Morgan Stanley's second acquisition under CEO Ted Pick, following last year's agreement to buy EquityZen, a trading platform for private-company shares. Both sit in wealth management. The workplace channel brought in a record $232 billion of net new assets in the third quarter, about half tied to IPOs, and the wealth manager pulled in $500 billion in the first nine months of the year. On the advisor side, Morgan Stanley added a Merrill team managing $5.9 billion this month, as Private Wealth Daily previously reported.
Given everything that's going on around client data protection, cyber security and risk, they want to keep everything within the four walls of Morgan Stanley.Jed Finn, head of wealth management at Morgan Stanley
Reported by the Practice management desk from AdvisorHub, Form ADV filings with the SEC and Private Wealth Daily Moves Wire. Published . Corrections