As we reported last week, a large lump of the net new money in Morgan Stanley's wealth arm came from IPOs that minted a new cohort of millionaires.

The extent to which initial public offerings – most notably that of SpaceX a month ago – have created new millionaires was underscored last week when Morgan Stanley reported record net new assets of $148.4 billion, and fee-based assets of $39 billion for the quarter. 

Over half of the NNA represented inflows related to IPOs of certain clients in the workplace channel. 

As Bloomberg noted (July 22), Elon Musk’s aerospace company is a customer of Morgan Stanley’s workplace channel, which provides clients’ employees with benefits like equity compensation, retirement plans and other executive services. 

And it appears that the workplace business is a money spinner for the US firm’s wealth channel more generally. 

Bloomberg quoted Jed Finn, the firm’s wealth management head, as describing the workplace business as a “a gift that keeps on giving.” “It would be a mistake to think about the IPO as a one-off event for asset capture. These are opportunities with multiple phases, with shares that get unlocked and new shares issued.”

Morgan Stanley has declined to comment on the workplace unit’s work for SpaceX in particular.

See more analysis here on FWR about the SpaceX IPO and the fact that the bulk of the company's shares are not yet openly traded. We also looked at how IPOs are important in creating fresh wealth for philanthropists.

According to the New York Times and investment platform Hill.com, about 4,000 to 4,400 staff at SpaceX were made millionaires. SpaceX has a total of about 22,000 employees.