Everyone into the Pool: More Looting by Wall Street
Although banks cannot technically invest in stocks or highly speculative assets such as private equity for their core capital, Wall Street wire houses such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch/Bank of America, LPL, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Raymond James, and others have been stuffing their high-net-worth clients with private equity investments for quite some time.
Lobbyists and Wall Street have convinced Trump to go along with the alternative asset charade, and on August 7, 2025, he signed an executive order, "Democratizing Access to Alternative Assets for 401(k) Investors." Trump, paying off his political backers, is pushing private equity, private credit, cryptocurrencies, commodities, infrastructure, and other investments into the American saver's nest egg.
Cryptocurrencies
Despite Larry Fink's love affair with cryptocurrencies, which BlackRock and Fidelity pushed through in January 2024, in October 2025, cryptos crashed, losing $19 billion in one day.
Not everyone is as in love with highly speculative assets as Larry Fink or Howard Lutnick, the former Cantor Fitzgerald investment banker who serves as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Trump. Read my book The Retirement Ruse to get some insight and see how both institutional investors and retail savers lost billions.
Aberdeen, a major U.K. asset manager, said that "it likes blockchain, but hates crypto." Hargreaves Lansdown, the U.K.'s largest DIY investment site, had this to say about cryptocurrency investments: "We do not think cryptocurrency has characteristics that mean it should be included for portfolios for growth or income and shouldn't be relied upon for clients to meet their financial goals. Bitcoin is not an asset class."
T. Rowe Price—A Cautionary Tale About Alternative Investments
The invasion of private equity investments into mutual fund companies such as T. Rowe Price should serve as a cautionary tale to the general public and asset management whales such as BlackRock, Fidelity, and Vanguard who looking for new revenues and bigger profits with alternative investments.
On December 29, 2021, T. Rowe Price acquired Oak Hill Advisors LP, a private equity firm, for $4.2 billion, of which 74 percent was paid in cash and 26 percent was paid in T. Rowe Price common stock. T. Rowe Price acquired Oak Hill Advisors because it managed $53 billion in investments in private credit, distressed debt, special situation funds, structured credit, and real assets.
T. Rowe Price (TROW) bet that by getting into private equity and alternative investments, it would strengthen and complement its core active-management strategy in mutual funds and target-date funds for 401(k)s. The thinking was that the acquisition of private equity companies would increase T. Rowe Price's exposure to wealthier clients and benefit its distribution system.
Apparently, the new alternative investment division TROW had acquired, Oak Hill Advisors, once touted as a life preserver for the mutual fund company, is not pulling its weight. In 2024 alone, TROW suffered more than $43 billion in redemptions from its core investment products.
It appears that T. Rowe Price paid too much for Oak Hill Advisors.
In the middle of 2025, T. Rowe Price announced layoffs across all departments, citing outflows in its assets under management and the company's inability to streamline its operations. Nevertheless, T. Rowe continued its path in private equity and illiquid investments, partnering with the behemoth Goldman Sachs. On September 5, 2025, Goldman Sachs, in pursuing a deeper journey in alternative investments, announced that it would invest up to $1 billion in T. Rowe Price for up to a 3.5 percent stake.
Perhaps the success or failure of TROW's acquisition lies in its stock price. When the deal was announced in the fall of 2021, TROW stock was trading as high as $216 a share. In April 2026, five years after the acquisition, TROW is trading down to $92 per share, more than 53 percent down. Where this ends up is anybody's guess.
Here are some of the players:
AIG Partners with CVC Capital Partners
According to a press release on January 19, 2026, global insurance giant AIG will partner with Luxembourg-based private equity firm CVC Capital Partners to establish a large-scale separately managed account (SMA) business using CVC credit strategies. The arrangement will also include CVC's private equity secondary strategies evergreen fund. AIG will seed the fund with CVC with an initial contribution of $1.5 billion.
Apollo Global
In April 2025, Apollo Global Management, in its relentless pursuit of retail savers' assets, announced that it had formed a unit called New Markets to contain four business lines, including traditional asset management, defined contribution 401(k)s, tax-advantaged solutions, and digital markets.
Apollo Global Management and State Street Global Management
In February 2025, a private credit ETF was launched by State Street Global that will hold as much as 35 percent of its assets in private debt deals from Apollo Global Management. Several months later, in April 2025, demand for this new ETF, SPDR SSGA IG Public & Private Credit ETF (ticker: PRIV), has been tepid.
Nevertheless, anticipating the inclusion of alternative investments into 401(k) even before Trump signed his executive order, State Street Global Advisors marched on and launched Target Retirement IndexPlus Strategy, a new target-date offering that blends traditional indexed-based with private market instruments. Initially 90 percent of the fund would be placed in public market indexes managed by State Street, while Apollo Global Management would manage 10 percent in private markets in a pooled investment vehicle.
BlackRock
In a very weird way, BlackRock is returning to its roots and becoming completely enmeshed in the world of private equity, going back to Blackstone, in search of higher fees and profits managing other people’s money. Its previous 2018 purchase of alternative credit manager Tennenbaum Capital Partners has become a bust, with poor investment performance and senior-level executive departures. It’s acquisitions of HPS Investment Partners is presenting additional challenges.
Blackstone Partners with Vanguard Group and Wellington
In April 2025, Blackstone announced new partnerships with Vanguard and Wellington Management to create and develop offerings with the asset management giants.
Blackstone Partners with Legal & General Group
In July 2025, insurer Legal & General Group plc and Blackstone announced a strategic partnership to give L&G clients access to Blackstone's private credit funds. The London-based insurer, with its £92 ($122.5 billion) annuities business, will leverage Blackstone's private credit arm to provide L&G's customers with Blackstone products. One of the largest pension risk transfer providers in the U.K., L&G will also invest up to 10 percent of anticipated new flows in the annuities business into Blackstone.
Blackstone Partners Sets Up New Unit to Invade 401(k)s with Gold Rush Advertising Campaign
In October 2025, Blackstone announced that it was creating a new unit within its $280 billion private wealth group specifically to spearhead its invasion into the 401(k) defined-contribution space. Heather von Zuben, an attorney and former Goldman Sachs banker, was chosen head of global retirement solutions. Tom Nides, the former banker, politician, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel, was named the unit's chairman. Paul Quinlan, a former Bank of America/Merrill Lynch banker and Blackstone CFO, was slated to lead Blackstone's launch into the 401(k) world.
To generate hoopla and excitement to get retail savers to put their savings into complex alternative investments, Blackstone launched a new national ad campaign the same month, built around a California "gold rush," using a pick-and-shovel metaphor to promote private equity investments. The campaign ran on TV and digital channels, heavily aimed at financial advisors and retail distributors of the products.
Blackstone Partners with the Canadian giant Asset Manager Empower
In January 2026, Blackstone announced that it was formally partnering with the Canadian giant asset manager Empower via collective investment trusts, which are exempt from SEC and other regulatory scrutiny.
Blue Owl (OWL) Jumps in with Voya Financial
New York-based Voya serves more than thirty-nine thousand employers with more than nine million plan participants that hold more than $630 billion in assets. In July 2025, according to a Wall Street Journal article, Blue Owl began partnering with retirement services provider Voya Financial to provide alternative illiquid investments in Voya’s 401(k) plans.
Brookfield Private Equity
Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. (NYSE: BAM, TSX: BAM) announced that it was launching a private equity evergreen fund that would be open to Canadian individual investors. Known as the BPE-CAD, individual savers could commit to monthly prescription periods rather than traditional private equity investments with long lock-ups. Exact minimum investments were not disclosed by Brookfield.
Capital Group and KKR & Co.
According to a late 2025 press release, more than two hundred thousand financial advisors did business with the Capital Group, best known for its American Funds. In May 2024, the Los Angeles-based Capital Group, the world’s largest active mutual fund manager with $3 trillion under management, announced that it was joining forces with KKR & Co. to sell private equity investments to wealthy individuals.
Charles Schwab
In October 2020, Schwab acquired its rival TD Ameritrade, turning Schwab into an asset manager with about $6 trillion in assets and twenty-eight million brokerage accounts. In June 2024, Charles Schwab, based in Westlake, Texas, announced plans to roll out alternative private equity investments to its clients. The platform Schwab planned to offer included private equity, venture capital, private credit, and long-short exchange funds to start.
In November 2025, Charles Schwab agreed to acquire Forge Global Holdings, a marketplace for buying and selling shares of private companies, for $600 million. In the agreement, Schwab paid $45 a share, more than 72 percent over its closing price in the same period. In April 2026, Schwab announced that it was launching a direct spot bitcoin trading through its new platform Schwar Crypto. The service will allow millions of Schwab clients to trade cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum just like stocks, bonds, ETFs and mutual funds.
Clearlake Capital
Clearlake Capital, the private equity firm that is the majority owner of Chelsea F.C., is also the private equity firm that put Wheel Pros into bankruptcy. In November 2025, Clearlake announced that it was acquiring Pathway Capital Management to help it sell private equity investments to retail investors.
CVC Capital Jumps on the 401(k) Bandwagon
CVC Capital, founded in 1981, and based in Luxembourg, is the European private equity giant was originally known as Citicorp Venture Capital and was spun out of Citibank in 1993. In 2025, major owners of CVC included CVC partners and employees, BlackRock, Vanguard, and other retirement plans. The company has more than £200 billion ($216 billion) in assets under management.
Although CVC Capital extolled all the virtues of being a private company like many private equity firms, it changed its tune in 2024 so insiders could cash out and went public in an IPO on Amsterdam Euronext. CVC like the rest of the buyout firms having problems cashing out of investments and wants to get into U.S. retail savers 401(k)s to cash out. CEO Rob Lucas, in the Financial Times said, “Realizations are inevitably quite lumpy.”
EQT
In 2025, EQT, a Swedish-based private equity firm that boasts more than $280 billion of assets under management and ownership stakes in more than three hundred companies around the globe, launched a new advertising campaign to have U.S. financial advisors invest with them. In January 2026, the Swedish private equity giant announced it was acquiring Coller Capital, based in London with $46 billion in secondary private equity assets under management. EQT was reportedly paying around $3.2 billion for Coller. State Street Corporation was a minority investor in Coller Capital.
Empower Partners with Apollo Global, Franklin Templeton, Partners Group, Goldman Sachs and Neuberger Berman to Sell Alternatives through 401(k)s
Empower is the second-largest retirement plan provider in the U.S., and is based in Greenwood Village, Colorado, but owned by Power Corporation of Canada, based in Montreal. A giant, Empower oversees $1.8 trillion of retirement assets for nineteen million people in over sixty-seven thousand organizations.
In May 2025, Empower announced that it was partnering with Apollo Global Management and Franklin Templeton to offer alternative illiquid investments in retirement savings plans. According to a press release, Empower is also working with additional private equity firms Partners Group, Goldman Sachs, and Neuberger Berman. In January 2026, Blackstone announced it was partnering with Empower to push private equity alternative investments into 401(k) plans.
Fidelity
As often the case, Fidelity is a pioneer in new investments. Since 2012, Fidelity has been investing retail investor funds, such as Fidelity Blue Chip and Contrafund, in risky private equity startups such as WeWork, Zenefits, and Blue Apron, all of which have become disasters.
In 2016, Fidelity Investments invested in Moonfare, a Berlin fintech platform founded in 2016 that specializes in distributing private equity investments. With more than one thousand users, Moonfare required investors to fork over a minimum of €100,000 in private equity funds from KKR & Co., the Carlyle Group, EQT, and Warburg Pincus. With Fidelity’s entrance, Moonfare hoped to drop the minimum to €50,000.
In October 2021, Fidelity launched a new division to oversee alternative investments, known as Fidelity Diversifying Solutions. Fidelity dove into cryptocurrencies in a big way in April 2022 when it announced it would be the “first-of-its-kind “ bitcoin offering in 401(k) programs with its Digital Assets Account, even though it was technically not approved by the SEC or the Department of Labor. In September 2022, Fidelity announced that it was launching an alternative investment fund, Fidelity Hedged Equity Fund. By 2022, Fidelity had received approval and registration for two mutual funds, Fidelity Global Macro Opportunities Fund and Fidelity Risk Parity Fund.
In January 2024, Fidelity and BlackRock descended into the cryptocurrency marketplace with SEC approval of Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund, while BlackRock got SEC approval for its BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust.
Franklin Templeton
Franklin Templeton (NYSE: BEN) began its private equity path when it acquired K2 Advisors, a hedge-fund company, in November 2012.
In February 2019, Franklin Templeton closed on the acquisition of Benefit Street Partners, a private credit firm with $26 billion of assets under management.
In July 2020, Franklin Templeton acquired Legg Mason (NYSE: LM), which brought Franklin Templeton’s total assets under management to $1.4 trillion.
Franklin Templeton then acquired Lexington Partners, a private equity secondaries and co-investment company, for $1.75 billion on April 1, 2022, which increased its AUM in alternative investments to $200 billion.
On November 1, 2022, Franklin Templeton acquired Alcentra, a European and U.S. private credit company, which increased its total alternative investments to $260 billion.
In January 2025, Franklin Templeton announced that it was launching a private equity secondaries fund, which are essentially used private-equity investments.
In June 2025, Franklin Templeton announced that it was acquiring European private credit firm Apera Asset Management with $90 billion in assets for an undisclosed amount.
Hargreaves Lansdown
In August 2024, a private equity consortium of CVC Capital Partners, Nordic Capital of Sweden, and Platinum Ivy, a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, agreed to take over Hargreaves Lansdown in a £5.4 billion ($6.86 billion)leveraged buyout, and the deal was approved by shareholders in October 2024.
By 2025, Hargreaves Lansdown had become the U.K.’s largest retail investment platform by offering individual investors access to stocks and bonds. In September 2025, it was announced that Hargreaves Lansdown plc and Schroders Capital would be offering alternative investments to individuals who set up their own pension funds.
Not a comforting announcement, Hargreaves Lansdown was one of the primary distributors of Neil Woodford’s Woodford Equity Income mutual fund that collapsed in 2019, trapping more than 290,000 investors when it was stuff with dozens of illiquid private equity investments.
HSBC
HSBC Holdings plc’s asset management arm announced in November 2025 that it was launching a fund that would sell investors secondary and co-investments from a menu of general partners. With a minimum investment of $25,000, the fund was aimed at customers in the U.K., Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Invesco
Invesco was ahead of the private equity rampage when it acquired W.L. Ross & Co., the distressed debt and private equity firm, from Wilbur Ross in 2006. Invesco paid $100 million upfront for WLR, and was to receive up to $375 million with earn-outs combined with Invesco Private Capital, its private equity arm.
In 2021, Invesco began a partnership with Galaxy Digital, and launched Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF in January 2024, along with Fidelity and BlackRock’s digital assets.
In 2023, Invesco acquired a minority stake in Faropoint, a specialist real estate manager.
In April 2024, Invesco announced a partnership with Barings, MassMutual’s alternative asset manager, to get into private credit with the backing of up to $650 million in capital from MassMutual.
Morgan Stanley
In October 2025, Morgan Stanley, which manages $6 trillion in assets and is considered one of the largest wealth managers in the world, announced that it had acquired EquityZen, a trading platform for buying and selling stakes in private companies.
One Digital Partners with Blackstone, Apollo Global and Ares Management
OneDigital is an employee-benefit online digital service formerly known as Digital Insurance, headquartered in Atlanta, owned by the private equity firms Stone Point Capital, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Onex Corp. of Toronto. On January 20, 2026, OneDigital announced that it would partner with Blackstone, Apollo Global, and Ares to incorporate private equity and private credit investments into certain 401(k)s.
Schroders Capital Partnered with Apollo Global Management, TIAA Acquired Schroders
In February 2026, Schroders, the U.K merchant banking partnership founded in 1804 in London Johann Heinrich Schroder, which has morphed into a major asset manager and one of the oldest asset managers in the world, announced that it was partnering with Apollo Global Management to sell private equity investments into retirement plans. Employing more than six thousand, Schroders has more than $1 trillion of assets under management.
To further bury disclosure requirements and increase the secrecy of the alternative investments, the companies announced that they would launch a collective investment trust (CIT) for defined contribution markets.
In an earnings call with analysts on the morning of Feb. 9, 2026, Marc Rowan, Apollo’s co-founder, CEO, and chair remarked, “We are going from serving one market, institutional alts portfolios, to serving six markets: We now serve individuals, we serve insurance, we serve the debt and equity buckets of our institutional clients, we serve traditional asset managers, and we hope to serve more robustly the 401(k) market. Each of these markets has the ability to be roughly the same size as our original market, which powered the entire industry.” Rowan said that he expected Apollo’s partnership with Schroders to “grow into a multibillion dollar” business.
On February 11, 2026, Nuveen, a division of TIAA, announced it would acquire Schroders for roughly $13.5 billion.
Vanguard
In February 2020, the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania-based mutual fund giant, with more than $10.4 trillion of assets under management, threw its hat into the private equity/alternative asset manager ring and announced its partnership with Boston's HarbourVest Partners, a private equity firm. In a press release, Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley stated, "Private equity will complement our leading indexed and actively managed funds, as we broaden access to this asset class and improve client outcomes." In February 2021, Vanguard published a white paper, "The Case for Private Equity at Vanguard."
On April 15, 2025, Vanguard, Blackstone, and Wellington announced a strategic alliance to develop multi-asset investment solutions in public and private markets.
Wellington Management
Wellington is the giant Boston-based asset manager with more than $1.1 trillion under management that flies under the radar because it is privately held. The once-staid Boston investment firm, housed on twenty-two floors of a thirty-one-story building known as Atlantic Wharf, is diving into alternative investments like its rivals from Franklin Resources, T. Rowe Price, BlackRock, and State Street.
In June 2023, according to Wellington's website, the company had invested more than $29 billion in alternative private equity investments, as it had been doing for twenty-five years, and claimed more than 1,140 clients using Wellington alternative investment approaches.