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