Morgan Stanley has partnered with Addepar to provide investment management platform services for its private wealth management group; Addepar is a growing investment management platform that provides solutions for aggregating and managing the wealth of private high net worth clients; Addepar is supported by Peter Thiel; prior to the partnership with Morgan Stanley its clients primarily included registered investment advisors; it is now seeking to expand to a broader range of large private wealth banking clients. Source
PayPal’s shares have climbed close to 75 percent in 2017 and now is considered more valuable than American Express; their market cap has doubled since spinning off from eBay in 2015; while it now finds itself on the heels of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs there is still some who fear they might be valued a bit too high; acquisitions, product diversification and partnership agreements have helped push the company in the last year. Source.
With cryptocurrency market caps rising and futures markets being adopted 2017 saw hedge funds pour over $2bn into the space; the figures come from a Morgan Stanley note sent to clients with research included from Autonomous NEXT; the note also shows 84 of 100 crypto related funds started in 2017; this year has helped the market to begin being more widely accepted by traditional institutional investors. Source.
Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and others have launched or will launch their own robo products to compete with slicker startups; after seeing the success of startups in the space the banks realized they needed to improve their offerings to keep customers and attract newer, younger ones; the trend to move away from white labeling technology to building their own is a recent one as some traditional players like UBS, State Street and John Hancock are still using services from SigFig, Motif or NextCapital. Source.
According to a new report by CB Insights the most recent 5 quarters show that big investments in fintech companies from banks has slowed down; banks are instead beginning to develop and update core technology in house; Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and others have all developed and released their own digital investing and advising services; service provides like Diebold are offering the banks a chance to move all infrastructure online so they can focus on customer facing tools; banks are still working through transformation as almost all have now realized if they do not upgrade legacy tech they will be left behind. Source.
Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman said he thinks bitcoin is “certainly something more than just a fad,” according to a Bloomberg report; he also stated that the concept of anonymous currency is interesting because of the privacy it provides; while he has yet to invest in the technology he does see more regulatory control coming soon. Source.
After completing a 16 month pilot program Morgan Stanley has announced their robo advisor Morgan Stanley Access Investing; there is a $5,000 minimum with a 0.35 percent fee and they will offer 11 portfolios, including a socially responsible option; the goal of the new service is to offer current clients’ children a better, more affordable wealth management option. Source.
In this week’s PeerIQ Weekly Update the company covers the recent spate of bank earning reports, securitization news and issues another round of hiring updates; banks have seen a continued drop in fixed income and commodities trading revenue, picking up the slack has been lending and wealth management; Citigroup and Morgan Stanley had strong reports while Goldman Sachs and American Express missed the mark; SoFi is issuing a $720mn securitization deal, Moody’s rated the A classes AAA; PeerIQ also lists five new hires stemming from the $12mn round last summer. Source.
The online lender has named Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Numis Corp to work on their upcoming IPO; the IPO is currently slated for the second or third quarter which may value the company around $2 billion; if successful it would be the largest IPO for a British fintech company; Index Ventures, Union Square Ventures and Accel Partners were early investors in the company. Source
Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman sent a memo to employees signaling their focus on technology innovation; American Banker reports that...