- T. Rowe Price CEO Rob Sharps told Bloomberg Television that tax-loss harvesting in separately managed accounts (SMAs) is a key growth vector for the firm, even as some US Treasury Department officials flagged concerns in July 2026 about “potentially abusive” industry tax strategies; Sharps said he is “very comfortable” with T. Rowe’s approach and distinguishes it from competing products he expects will face regulatory scrutiny.
- The competitive backdrop is notable: Charles Schwab and Fidelity Investments — two of the largest competitors in the wealth management space — have both begun pulling back from aggressive tax-aware strategies in response to Treasury’s signals, creating an opening for T. Rowe to capture market share from advisors and clients who want to continue using these methods with a manager who is leaning in rather than retreating.
- T. Rowe Price ($1.9 trillion AUM) has been under revenue and flows pressure since 2022, when simultaneous declines in equities and fixed income triggered billions in client outflows; the firm is now executing a multi-pronged alternatives expansion — it acquired Oak Hill Advisors (alternative credit) in 2021, launched its first interval fund in partnership with Goldman Sachs in July 2026 to give retail investors access to private assets, and hired former AQR partner Bill Cashel earlier this year to lead its US wealth alternatives push.
- The interval fund launch with Goldman is particularly significant: it represents T. Rowe’s formal entry into the retail alternatives channel that firms like Blackstone, Apollo, and Blue Owl have been capturing aggressively, giving T. Rowe a vehicle to compete for fee revenue from the high-net-worth and mass-affluent segments that are increasingly demanding private market exposure alongside their public equity allocations.
What Happened?
T. Rowe Price CEO Rob Sharps appeared on Bloomberg Television on September 1, 2026, laying out the firm’s strategy for recovering from years of outflows since 2022. He identified SMAs with tax-loss harvesting as a growth area, pushed back on concerns that T. Rowe’s methods would face Treasury scrutiny, and highlighted the firm’s alternatives buildout: the 2021 Oak Hill acquisition, July 2026’s Goldman co-branded interval fund, and the hiring of former AQR partner Bill Cashel as head of US wealth alternatives. Schwab and Fidelity’s retreat from tax strategies was referenced as an opportunity, not a warning sign.
Why It Matters?
The active management industry is fighting for relevance against passive indexing on two fronts simultaneously: cost (ETFs win on fees) and tax efficiency (direct indexing and SMAs are narrowing the after-tax return gap). T. Rowe’s bet is that SMAs with tax optimization can be a differentiator — particularly if Schwab and Fidelity are ceding that space under regulatory pressure. The alternatives push is the other leg of the strategy: private credit and private equity carry fees that public market mandates cannot match, and the interval fund structure opens those economics to the mass-affluent channel for the first time. Whether this two-pronged strategy is enough to reverse sustained outflows from a $1.9T AUM base will be the key financial story for T. Rowe over the next 12-18 months.
What’s Next?
Watch Treasury’s formal guidance on tax-loss harvesting strategies — expected before year-end — which could either validate Sharps’s confidence or force T. Rowe to also scale back its SMA tax offerings. On the alternatives side, the Goldman interval fund’s fundraising pace in Q3 and Q4 2026 will be the early proof-of-concept metric; if it attracts meaningful retail capital, expect T. Rowe to launch additional vehicles in 2027. Flows data in T. Rowe’s Q3 2026 earnings (due late October) will be the clearest measure of whether this strategy is moving the needle on client retention and net new assets.
Source: Bloomberg
