Susanna Batley

In addition, we're seeing OpenAI, Anthropic also potentially come to market later this year as well.

So there is a lot of new share issues are forecasted for this year.

And I think if we step back a bit, it's been really, really interesting.

It's almost like we are in a new era when it comes to some of the dynamics that we're seeing.

If we look at the last, let's call it two decades, there's really been almost a contraction in the listed markets relative to the economy.

And I think there's really three dynamics that have been at play.

So the first one is there's just been a lack of IPOs and companies have stayed private for much longer.

In fact, a couple of stats I saw recently were quite interesting.

In 1999, the average age of a company that listed was six years old.

Now that's 14 years old.

And if we take as an example, Google, when that listed back in 2004, six years old at the time.

Palantir listing in 2020, I think they were 17 years old.

So we're really seeing companies stay private for longer and able to raise money before going public.

Second dynamic is that companies have been really quite flush with cash, and so yes, there may be growth opportunities that they'll reinvest that cash into, but a lot of these companies, and these are Meta, Alphabet, et cetera, they've been buying back stock.

And so you've actually seen sort of less shares on the market.

And then also that their dynamic is just that huge explosion in private markets and private equity.

And some of those transactions have meant that private equity have actually taken out listed markets and taken them private.

So you've seen sort of those dynamics all at play.

And I think that

A common theme of that is that they've been relatively capital-like businesses.