Brokers, Asset Managers & Exchanges: 2026 MS Financials Conference Recap: Day 2

Research evidence excerpt

Brokers, Asset Managers & Exchanges: 2026 MS Financials Conference Recap: Day 2

FoundationM

Executive Summary

What’s New? We wrapped up the second and final day of our 17th Annual Morgan Stanley

Financials Conference. 10 firms participated across the capital markets space including

among the alts, trads, solutions providers, brokers, and exchanges including: APO, ARES,

BN, CG, KKR, RPC (formerly PX), IVZ, BULL (not covered), WLTH (not covered), Trumid

(private).

Key themes from Day 2 of the Financials Conference:

• Macro more resilient than feared - Mgmt teams generally described the macro

backdrop as healthy despite ongoing geopolitical, tariff, and inflation uncertainty.

Alts noted portfolio fundamentals remain intact, credit markets remain open, and

demand for yield and scaled capital solutions continues to support deployment.

• Fundraising remains strong - Alts continued to point to durable LP demand,

strong re-up rates, and resilient private wealth flows. While investors remain

focused on liquidity and DPI, scaled platforms with broad product sets continue to

see strong fundraising momentum across private credit, infrastructure,

secondaries, and wealth channels.

• Digital infrastructure as a key deployment theme - AI-driven demand for data

centers, power, fiber and broader digital infrastructure remains a major

opportunity across the alts. Managers emphasized the need for scale, structuring

capability, and capital flexibility, while remaining selective around counterparties,

lease quality, and speculative development risk.

• AI across all subsectors - AI remained a key theme across alt/trad managers,

brokers, and market infrastructure. Alts are deploying capital behind AI

beneficiaries, while trads, brokers, and market structure platforms are using AI to