For Millionaires Only
Minimum Requirement: US$100 Million
Nasdaq is set to launch Wednesday what its executives are calling one of the most significant developments on Wall Street in decades — a private stock market for super-wealthy investors. Minimum requirement for traders: US$100 million in assets.
Any private firm can list on Nasdaq’s new platform, which is called the Portal Market, and raise money by selling stock to an elite group of shareholders. Once a tiny influence on the markets, private money has gained unprecedented power on Wall Street. This year, the biggest deals have been swung not by public companies, but by private-equity firms that are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to buy household names, such as Hilton Hotels, Sallie Mae and Chrysler, and turn them into private companies. The rise of private money has created a new class of powerbrokers on Wall Street who have enriched themselves even as they provided billions of investment dollars to companies in all kinds of industries. But the trend is causing a backlash among working-class Americans who generally are shut out from investing directly in those circles.
