Morgan Stanley to buy stock-plan firm

NEW YORK — Morgan Stanley agreed to buy Solium Capital Inc. in a bid to add younger clients and tech startups to its stock-plan administration business.

The firm will pay $25.48 a share in cash, according to a statement Monday, or about 43 percent higher than Solium’s closing price on Friday. The agreement values Solium at about $900 million.

Morgan Stanley will add Calgary-based Solium’s 3,000 stock-plan clients and 1 million participants to its rival offering, which has 320 clients and 1.5 million participants. Solium’s clients include such startups as Stripe Inc., Instacart Inc. and Shopify Inc., giving Morgan Stanley’s investment bankers a chance to pitch those firms capital-raising ideas, while its advisers court tech workers as they start to accumulate wealth.

The large premium Morgan Stanley agreed to pay “might raise a brow, but we think this makes significant strategic sense,” analysts at Evercore ISI said in a note, adding that the link-up “provides a real path towards the organic growth and next generation of clients that many investors have been questioning.”

The Wall Street bank entered into a partnership with Solium in 2016 to administer equity-compensation plans for its corporate clients and their employees. The deal announced Monday won’t affect Morgan Stanley’s buyback plans, and is expected to be completed in the second quarter, according to the statement.