Morgan Stanley Offers Pre-IPO Share Trading to Wealth Clients

Morgan Stanley’s wealth management arm is giving its clients a chance to buy and sell coveted shares of private companies before they are available to the wider public, as startups weighing initial public offerings increasingly remain private for longer.

The bank’s Private Markets Transaction Desk will assist Morgan Stanley Wealth Management clients seeking to invest in the highly-fragmented and opaque market for private shares, according to a statement Monday. Shares in more than 1,000 so-called unicorns — private companies valued at over $1 billion — aren’t available to the general public, the statement showed.

Private market trades let employees ...