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

For investors who want to get exposure to firms that might float on a stock market via an IPO, Clear Street, a brokerage, has built a new unit targeted at Accredited Investors and qualified purchasers. 

Clear Street has launched Clear Street Private Markets, a new business line which gives access to pre-IPO companies, as well as offering execution, financing and private-market research through its existing brokerage platform.

The unit's first offering is pre-IPO exposure to Databricks, the AI and data analytics company.

Clear Street, founded in 2018 and based in New York, 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. 

Explaining the mechanics of how its platform works, Clear Street said investors don’t buy Databricks shares directly. Instead, Clear Street clients take a stake in a special purpose vehicle (SPV) that holds an interest in a fund that owns the underlying stock, with the outside fund remaining Databricks' shareholder of record. 

Databricks was valued at $188 billion following a term sheet signed on July 16. Clear Street intends to focus mainly on technology companies valued at between $5 billion and $20 billion that are roughly six months to two years from an initial public offering. 

The rollout of such a service comes at a time when there’s 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. 

Raymond James Investment Management
Raymond James Investment Management, a global asset management company with over $171 billion in assets and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Raymond James, this week said it has completed the conversion of the Carillon ClariVest Capital Appreciation Mutual Fund into the newly-launched New York-listed RJ ClariVest Capital Appreciation ETF, an actively managed exchange-traded fund.

The fund, which began trading yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange, is managed by a team at ClariVest Asset Management, a boutique manager of Raymond James Investment Management. The conversion marks the launch of the firm’s fourth ETF, building on the launch of its first three ETFs in October 2025.

“We're excited to expand our ETF lineup with RJCA, giving advisors and investors another way to access the differentiated investment capabilities of our boutique teams,” said Matt Johnson, head of commercial strategy at Raymond James Investment Management.

RJCA is a US large-cap growth ETF that seeks capital appreciation by investing in companies that the portfolio management team believes have the potential for attractive long-term growth in earnings, cash flow, and total company worth, favoring large-cap stocks that appear undervalued relative to their long-term growth fundamentals.

A number of firms have been launching ETFs recently, for instance US-headquartered investment managers Franklin Templeton and Invesco. PwC’s latest Global ETF report and data also suggests a structural shift in the way that the next $15 trillion in assets will be managed. It highlights how well placed ETFs are to benefit from the rapid technological advances. See more here, here and here.