Russell Brandom

Last week, the SEC announced it has a new statistics and data visualization page that is pretty cool. The information is “interactive,” presented in graphics and also can be downloaded. For folks tracking deals, you’ll get this information quarterly: IPOs, follow-on offerings, corporate bond deals and Reg D offerings. You’ll get Reg A offerings on a semi-annual basis. On an annual basis, you’ll get this information about reporting issuers: number of domiciled (and foreign) exchange-listed companies, REITs, inactive issuers, and OTC and other unlisted companies. There are all sorts of other types of information provided, such as the number of households qualifying as an accredited investor and the relative participation of households in the capital markets. Unfortunately, nothing on shareholder proposals. I have no idea how useful this information is to investors or how much of this information is now easily available in these formats through AI, but it is nifty for us in the field… #corpgov https://lnkd.in/g-9pmXj2

15

It's not just affordability. Americans are worried about losing their jobs too... Eye-opening story from my Bloomberg News colleagues Jarrell Dillard & Hadriana Lowenkron on the results of a new survey done for Bloomberg by The Harris Poll. https://lnkd.in/eH_j5rdu

19

Reverse stock splits globally have climbed to a record this year, underscoring the strain on small-cap companies struggling to stay listed even as an AI-fueled rally lifts technology heavyweights to fresh highs. The gap between reverse and traditional splits highlights a widening divide in equity markets, with struggling small caps using financial maneuvers to support their share prices while megacaps extend a powerful rally driven by AI and technology spending. Story for Reuters https://lnkd.in/g8v_fgZF

26

Markets were shaken last week by a speculative essay about how AI might disrupt jobs and companies that some likened to science fiction. So I reached out to Max Levchin, Affirm’s founder and CEO, who’s a lifelong sci-fi fan and told me last year he often swaps sci-fin reading recommendations with old PayPal colleagues like Elon Musk. The Citrini Research report was a healthy exercise with a lot of flair to it, he told me, but it took some liberties, too. Here’s how he thinks the vision of a “quasi-dystopian reality” lines up with reality, and why predicting the middle distance is the hardest thing to do. From The CEO Signal, via SEMAFOR https://lnkd.in/efX52Yhh

14

4 Comments

There are a lot of ways that Elon's deal to formally combine X and xAI is ... unorthodox. It's got the same advisors on both sides. It assigns huge valuations. It doesn't make use of any independent committee or other checks that are typical in transactions. These are the kinds of the things that would normally cause myriad lawsuits for public companies. Typically, shareholders are not shy about litigating, alleging they got shortchanged or were overpaying for the target. (Elon knows the threat of shareholder lawsuits well -- it's what put the brakes on his $44b pay package.) But because of where the companies are incorporated (Nevada), and who the investors in both companies are, the deal is likely safe, experts say. Read more from me and Lauren Thomas in The Wall Street Journal

46

11 Comments

BlackRock has dramatically amped up its social posts and is striking back against misinformation in the Twittersphere (Xphere?), Michael Taffe reports. Check out his FundFire piece looking at how the world's largest asset manager is using bots to identify posts that frame the firm inaccurately, and setting the record straight. See the accounts the firm engages with most, the topics it's addressing and the tenor of the sometimes-sarcastic messages. https://lnkd.in/e7jqvVp5

111

5 Comments

Is Generative AI just overhyped, mindless math, or world-changing technology? What if the skeptics are right — and what if the skeptics of the skeptics are right? My post for the Tow-Knight Center for Journalism Futures at Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY digs into the debate — and what we don't know we don't know. https://lnkd.in/epDP9Umm

21