The latest news in investment offerings, financial products and other services relevant to wealth advisors and their clients.

Apex Group, PISCES
Apex Group, a financial services provider, has launched its Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System (PISCES) suite of services.

Announced earlier this year, PISCES enables the intermittent trading of secondary shares in private companies. This helps private equity managers, corporates, founders, and employees to access liquidity without requiring a full company sale. Access is open to those including HNW individuals. Private market investment remains a hot topic in wealth management – as are access and liquidity.

Before trading takes place on a PISCES platform, Apex Group works with companies to ensure that they are compliant, transparent and ready to present themselves to potential investors. At the point of a secondary share sale, Apex Group will manage the trading process as an RAA, as well as providing licensing application support, and customer and asset due diligence. Beyond the PISCES platform, Apex said it will continue to provide ongoing business services and compliance support.

“With the introduction of PISCES, Apex Group is providing corporates and private equity managers with everything they need to unlock liquidity on the London Stock Exchange’s new Private Securities Market,” Stephen Geddes, head of UK corporate oversight and strategic advisory, Apex, said.

PISCES is a new type of private stock market; the UK is trying to exploit rising demand for investment access into non-publicly traded firms. PISCES enables the intermittent trading of secondary shares in private companies. This helps private equity managers, corporates, founders, and employees access liquidity without requiring a full company sale.

MSCI
MSCI, a market index provider, has launched the MSCI All Country Public + Private Equity Index, a daily index that combines public markets and a broad private equity view within a single framework. 

The index combines the MSCI ACWI IMI measure, which represents the performance of the full opportunity set of publicly listed equities across developed and emerging markets, and the new MSCI All Country Private Equity Index, a daily measure based on MSCI’s proprietary dataset of LP-sourced cash flows and valuations from nearly 10,000 private equity funds. 

The new index, with a target allocation to private equity set to 15 per cent, is calculated daily based on the drifted weight and the daily performance of each component index. The index is reviewed and rebalanced quarterly to maintain consistency with the target allocation weights. In each review, the latest available component index data are incorporated, and the weighting factors are reset to the target allocation.