Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Lynn Martin is with us.
Speaker 1: She's president of the New York Stock Exchange. She joins
Speaker 1: us here at a Bloomberg invest in downtown Manhattan. It's
Speaker 1: interesting because it seems like there's been this sudden change
Speaker 1: in sentiment. We saw an IPO polled this week already.
Speaker 1: Is this conflict enough to materially change how companies are
Speaker 1: thinking about IPO ing.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I mean, there's always going to
Speaker 2: be geopolitical events happening, and the political framework is always
Speaker 2: going to continue to evolve, and if you're a good company,
Speaker 2: you can always go public. I mean, you look at
Speaker 2: the volatility we saw in twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. We had some amazing companies go public
Speaker 2: and do really well, raise a ton of capital to
Speaker 2: fund their operations, to build R and D capabilities, and
Speaker 2: they're trading levels that are multiples of where they iPod.
Speaker 2: You look at a company like Reddit, for example, that
Speaker 2: iPod around this time in twenty twenty four, it's done
Speaker 2: extraordinarily well. So I think companies need to be mindful
Speaker 2: of how anything that's occurring on the geopolitical landscape is
Speaker 2: going to affect their businesses in the short term, medium term.
Speaker 3: What's more difficult land or what's the thing that kind
Speaker 3: of makes you kind of want to pull your hair out?
Speaker 3: Is it the geopolitical is it stuff out of Washington?
Speaker 3: Or is it the constant and increasing growth of private
Speaker 3: markets that allow companies to stay private longer?
Speaker 2: Like it's pretty staggering, you know. I think the thing
Speaker 2: that makes me want to pull my hair out is,
Speaker 2: you know, the narrative of around what we could do
Speaker 2: to fix the fact that companies don't necessarily see a
Speaker 2: quick exit in the public markets. If you take a
Speaker 2: couple of steps back, our public markets are the NB
Speaker 2: of the world. You look at the amount of capital
Speaker 2: that gets raised their secondaries, IPOs, whatever the case may be,
Speaker 2: it's extraordinary. It is why more and more companies are
Speaker 2: looking towards the US as the most desirable geography from
Speaker 2: a capital formation standpoint. When you think about why a
Speaker 2: company isn't going public, a lot of times it is
Speaker 2: the areas that Chair Atkins covered in his make IPOs
Speaker 2: Great Again speech, Simpler disclosure frameworks, looking and mitigating some
Speaker 2: of the litigation risks that face public companies. Those types
Speaker 2: of things significant shareholder reform, proxy reform, things of that nature.
Speaker 2: That's really what keeps companies off to the sideline.
Speaker 3: Is there something that lind to be said that by
Speaker 3: having though a pretty deep private market and allowing companies
Speaker 3: to stay private a little bit longer, that when they
Speaker 3: finally go public, they're a much healthier company.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Absolutely, I've been saying this for years. Companies being
Speaker 2: private for longer, that's a great thing because to your point,
Speaker 2: when they come out to market, they have refined their strategy,
Speaker 2: they have a very clear path towards profitability, or they're
Speaker 2: already profitable and they're ready to take that next step
Speaker 2: in diversification of shareholders.
Speaker 1: What about ending quarterly reporting? Does that prevent blasphemy? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean the President pushed for that, you know, the
Speaker 1: SEC chairs looking to fast track it is what would
Speaker 1: that do? In your view?
Speaker 2: Uh, it's a bit of a two edged sort because
Speaker 2: what does eliminate in quarterly reporting necessarily mean you want
Speaker 2: to give people less transparency around financials?
Speaker 1: Oh, we can, we hear you there, that's our job.
Speaker 2: But if you're a newly public company, should you have
Speaker 2: to report your first earnings call forty five days. Within
Speaker 2: forty five days after you've ip o'ed, you've just given
Speaker 2: investors a very clear forward guidance and a clear look
Speaker 2: at your financial what really changed over those forty five days.
Speaker 2: So there, I think there's probably a path forward that
Speaker 2: makes it less punitive but doesn't sacrifice the transparency. And
Speaker 2: potentially something we've advocated for is if you're a newly
Speaker 2: public company, maybe you don't fall into the quarterly reporting
Speaker 2: cycle immediately.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like you are a fan of quarterly reports.
Speaker 1: I am, and I think I don't want to speak
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 3: Carol, I do. I mean, you know, I often think
Speaker 3: about how it sometimes is frustrating for companies because you know,
Speaker 3: look at the AI build out or different things that
Speaker 3: might be transformative or are transformative that in order to
Speaker 3: spend money, it's going to impact you, you know, in
Speaker 3: terms of your balance sheet. So where do we kind
Speaker 3: of give some leeway for people to do this right?
Speaker 3: But I also do think we have seen things go wrong,
Speaker 3: and so I love, like you said, the US market.
Speaker 3: It's deep, it's liquid, it's incredibly transparent.
Speaker 1: And that's why it's the envy of the world.
Speaker 2: It's the envy of the world because I think of
Speaker 2: that right, But a silver bullet is not necessarily okay,
Speaker 2: decrease the amount of transparency you're given to investors, although
Speaker 2: I do think there is a role for less, less
Speaker 2: frequent reporting for the newly public companies. But then also,
Speaker 2: what are you reporting, how are you reporting it? And
Speaker 2: does it look like a quarterly earn a scholar, doesn't
Speaker 2: look like just a simple financial update.
Speaker 1: Can we talk prediction markets?
Speaker 3: Please do it?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: So Nazak is working on yes, no contracts. We saw
Speaker 1: this news break yesterday, our colleague Cat Doherty reporting this.
Speaker 1: You have a poly Market investment, yep. Give us an
Speaker 1: update on how that partnership is going. And I'm curious
Speaker 1: if you would consider just doing prediction markets yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if there's a regulatory framework that allows
Speaker 2: for us to do, we absolutely would would look at
Speaker 2: that as an opportunity. But to your question, your initial
Speaker 2: question is our investment in poly market. The partnership's going
Speaker 2: incredibly well. We announced an investment in poly market about
Speaker 2: a billion dollars last fall. It was really focused more
Speaker 2: on the data side and giving transparency, particularly when you
Speaker 2: look at how the data is impacting your more traditional markets.
Speaker 2: Great example is which I love to tell people, is
Speaker 2: I was on the floor on election night and I
Speaker 2: remember looking up, and you've been to the New York
Speaker 2: Stock Exchange. You see all the technology and market data
Speaker 2: that that is broadcast every day from there, and I
Speaker 2: saw the market starting a spike up. I said, well,
Speaker 2: what just happened? The S and P futures in particular
Speaker 2: started to spike up. So what just happened? And someone said,
Speaker 2: Polly just called the election for President Trump, And that
Speaker 2: was more like a double click moment, like, oh, interesting
Speaker 2: that the prediction markets are influencing what is occurring in
Speaker 2: your more traditional markets. You look at everything that's gone
Speaker 2: on this past weekend, the strait of horror mooos, which
Speaker 2: we've all been focused on, how is that impacting energy markets?
Speaker 2: Our parent company is the leader in energy futures contracts.
Speaker 2: So what you see on poly market around news and
Speaker 2: sentiment around the strait of horror moves is impacting what
Speaker 2: happens in our energy market.
Speaker 3: Just get about thirty seconds has become though more than
Speaker 3: just there's a lot of sports and sports gambling that
Speaker 3: still happens on these marketplaces. Does it change, How does
Speaker 3: it change, How quicly does it change?
Speaker 2: So Polly, Our interest in Polly was because it wasn't
Speaker 2: as focused on the sports band market. It's more focused
Speaker 2: on the geopolitical. They were a little bit different when
Speaker 2: you look at the markets that they had operated.
Speaker 3: Okay, so that's not something yeah, okay, that you're too
Speaker 3: worried about or concerned about. Thank you, thanks for having
Speaker 3: me Lyn Martin, president of the New York Stocking Change,
Speaker 3: joining us here at Bloomberg in Vest