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

New York-headquartered Clear Street has launched Clear Street Private Markets Equity Research, a research offering covering private companies ahead, and independent, of public listing. 

The service is led by equity analyst Owen Lau.

The research will be accessible directly within clients' Clear Street accounts, alongside its existing private markets platform for private company access, execution and liquidity. The research launch addresses a gap in pre-IPO investing, where coverage of late-stage private companies has typically been limited to sell-side analysis or fragmented third-party sources. Clear Street said the offering is intended to give clients independent, institutional-grade research to evaluate opportunities before companies reach public markets.

Lau's team has already published a series of fireside chats on private companies of interest to institutional investors ahead of the formal research launch, Clear Street said in a statement yesterday. 

Clear Street, founded in 2018, provides prime brokerage, custody and clearing infrastructure aimed at giving institutional and sophisticated investors access to public and private markets from a single platform. The firm was valued at close to $12 billion in a private funding round earlier this year and paused its own initial public offering plans in February.  

As reported here in early August, Clear Street has built a new unit targeted at Accredited Investors and qualified purchasers. 

The rollout of such a service comes at a time when there has been a structural shift of firms from public to private markets. Some companies remain privately held for longer before going to IPO than would have been the case a decade or more ago. A factor has been the rise in regulatory requirements, including results disclosures, on listed businesses.