Morgan Stanley has agreed to buy Vinyl Equity, a digital transfer agent registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

A transfer agent keeps the official record of a company’s shareholders and handles share transfers between them.

Once the deal closes, Vinyl will join Morgan Stanley at Work, the bank’s equity compensation unit.

Companies will then be able to manage their cap tables, share plans, share transfers and wealth services in one place.

Founded in 2022, Vinyl uses digital workflows and real-time reports to replace work that transfer agents have long done manually.

The firm works with issuers, lawyers and banks, and focuses on complex stages such as an initial public offering (IPO).

Morgan Stanley said the deal will lay the groundwork for its future tokenisation plans.

Tokenisation records ownership of assets, such as shares, as digital tokens on a blockchain.

According to the bank, blockchain, tokenisation and atomic settlement are changing the industry.

In atomic settlement, both sides of a trade settle at the same moment.

“Private markets are playing an increasingly important role in wealth management as companies stay private for longer and value is created outside the public markets,”

said Jed Finn, Head of Wealth Management at Morgan Stanley.

“We started Vinyl with the belief that the infrastructure supporting corporate ownership needed to change,”

said Rob Schoder, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Vinyl Equity.

Vinyl will sit alongside the bank’s Private Markets Transaction Desk and its private share marketplace, EquityZen.

These services support late-stage private companies preparing to go public.

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027, subject to customary conditions.

Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Switzerland, based on image by Vinyl Equity via its website and thanyakij-12 via Magnific.