Private Markets Are Going Retail. So Should Employee Equity

Something significant is happening in the background of UK wealth management and most people haven’t noticed.

As reported in today's Financial Times, the country’s largest wealth managers - RBC Wealth, Evelyn Partners, Quilter Cheviot - are preparing to offer retail clients access to private markets: think private equity, private credit, infrastructure. Even Hargreaves Lansdown and AJ Bell are reportedly working on ways to open up these investments to affluent DIY investors.

This isn’t just product expansion. It’s a sign that capital markets are being rewired.

For decades, most people invested in public markets, buying shares in listed companies through funds, SIPPs or ISAs. But today, the UK equity market is shrinking. Companies are listing later (if at all), delisting faster, or heading overseas. The deal flow, the growth - the action - is increasingly happening in private.

Now, private capital firms, from Blackstone to EQT, want to tap the retail investor base. With institutional fundraising harder, the consumer savings pool looks tempting. Pensions anyone?

And with vehicles like the Long-Term Asset Fund (LTAF) and the proposed PISCES platform, regulators are opening the gates.

But this raises a deeper question.

If capital goes private, and ownership disappears from view, who benefits?

And more to the point: where do employees fit in this new ownership economy?

Share Plans as Economic Infrastructure

In public companies, there’s a legacy of employee ownership: SAYE, SIPs, LTIPs, executive options. Not perfect, but part of the system. Once listed, a company lives in the public realm. Employee equity is a normal part of that story.

Private companies are different. There’s no disclosure. No AGM. And often, no share plan, at least not beyond the boardroom.

Which is a problem. Because if:

• Capital increasingly sits in private funds,
• Savers can now access that capital via LTAFs, and
• Liquidity is made available through platforms like PISCES

…then we’re re-engineering the capital system and potentially leaving employee equity ownership behind unless we do something about it.

The Ownership Gap

For all the talk of democratising private markets, there’s a risk we simply reproduce the same patterns of exclusion, only this time with slicker tech and a longer lock-up period.

Wealth managers want in. Retail investors want in. But employees already in the business often remain out, with no access to the equity they’re helping to grow.

It’s not just unfair. It’s inefficient. Equity motivates. It aligns. It attracts. And it can be designed to reflect the economic realities of private capital - whether through growth shares, JSOPs, phantom plans, or catch-up mechanisms linked to management incentive plans (MIPs).

From MIPs to Mass Participation?

There’s already a playbook for aligning management with private equity returns - it’s called a MIP. But too often that alignment stops at the C-suite.

The tools exist to go further:

• Scaled-down MIP-style awards for key employees.
• Broad-based growth share plans for staff in private equity-backed companies.
• Liquidity events, potentially via Pisces, that offer periodic access to value.
• Co-investment structures within LTAFs that include staff as investors - not just as a marketing case study, but as real participants.

If the capital stack is opening to the public, the cap table should open to employees.

Final Thoughts

Private markets have a big future. That's now clear.

But if we are serious about building a resilient economy and a fairer society, we can't let capital get more concentrated just as it gets more sophisticated. If we are democratising access for investors, we must do the same for employees.

Share plans should be part of the architecture of modern capitalism.

If capital is going private, ownership must go with it. 

All views expressed are those of the author.