Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Friday, May 22nd, and this is your FT News Briefing. Wall Street is getting pumped about three blockbuster IPOs, and Turkey's president just got a big boost from a court in Ankara. Plus, we'll take a look at the U.S. 's pressure campaign on Cuba. I'm Mark Filippino, and here's the news you need to start your day.
Elon Musk's SpaceX is going public, and it's about to trigger a trading frenzy on Wall Street. SpaceX filed for an initial public offering on Wednesday. Tech giants OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to file their IPOs shortly.
Chapter 2: What blockbuster IPOs are set to ignite Wall Street?
And the arrival of three new major companies on Wall Street has analysts talking about an unprecedented wave of stock market buying and selling. George Stier is a markets correspondent for the FT, and he's here to tell us more. Hi, George. Hey. So George, tell me why the SpaceX IPO is such a big deal.
So the IPO is expected to be the largest of all time. It's going to hopefully, for Elon Musk, raise around $75 billion. And SpaceX is targeting a valuation of around 1.75 trillion, which would immediately rank it within the top 10 biggest companies in the world.
The way I understand it is that SpaceX isn't actually planning to release a lot of shares at the beginning, right?
No, the proportion of its total shares that will actually be traded on IPO day next month is relatively small. So less than 5% of its total share count, which is unusually small.
But companies over the last few years have been slowly reducing the proportion of the shares that they list because the fewer shares, the greater demand, the bigger the potential price jump on the first day of trading, which is something that the bankers and the company itself wants to see.
So we've got the SpaceX IPO. Then there was news this week that OpenAI is preparing to file. Anthropic is expected to follow suit. What is this frenzy going to look like on Wall Street, this buying and trading frenzy?
Well, these are three of the most hyped private companies in the world right now for various reasons. One, space is interesting. SpaceX has almost a monopoly on commercial space travel. and is working with NASA on that. OpenAI and Anthropic, along with a few of their slightly smaller rivals, have a stranglehold on the LLM, large language model AI market right now.
And that is where all of the growth and all of the interest in investor appetite has been over the last few years, basically since ChatGPT was released. a few years ago.
So the three companies, when they do eventually all trade on US public markets, probably by the end of the year, it's expected that there will be huge investor demand for those shares, the prices of which could go crazy based on how the stock market itself has performed over the last two or three years.
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Chapter 3: Why is the SpaceX IPO considered a big deal?
So, I mean, just in every way that you think life could be very difficult, I think the lack of energy has really, really compounded it.
It sounds pretty dire. You know, aside from this brutal energy blockade, how else is the Trump administration escalating things with Havana?
Well, we saw the indictment of Raul Castro, who is 94. He's the brother of Fidel Castro. He's, you know, a stalwart of the revolution. He's the sort of supreme leader figure in Cuba. He's no longer the president, but the president is seen as somebody, Miguel Diaz-Canel, he's somebody who's seen to do the bidding of the Castros. essentially. So he's an enormously important figure.
So this week, Raul Castro was indicted for murder, conspiracy to kill US nationals, destruction of aircraft. It relates to the downing of two civilian aircraft in 1996. Four people were killed, three Americans and one resident. So they've really upped the ante with this indictment. And so now this is just sort of the latest in a drip, drip, drip of points of pressure to try and get the
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regime to bend to Trump's will.
Yeah, but what does Trump want here?
Well, Donald Trump hasn't been terribly clear about this. He has said over the past weeks and months that he could be looking at a friendly takeover. He said he could take Cuba. Now he's saying he wants to help Cuba. And Marco Rubio, who is the Secretary of State, who's a Cuban-American himself,
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Chapter 4: What impact will the IPOs of OpenAI and Anthropic have on the market?
So we wanted to sort of switch up the content just a bit for our audience, too. So on Monday, we're doing a fun little swap with Slate, which is an online daily news magazine based here in New York.
That episode is going to focus on the conversation about threats from billionaires to leave New York and California, since both of those states have floated this idea of raising more revenue through higher taxes on wealthier residents. And then on Tuesday, we're dropping a conversation that I had with our colleague John Byrne Murdoch on global population decline.
Which is just a huge topic right now, no matter where you are. Victoria, I'm curious, what did John tell you about the reason that it's picking up?
Yeah, I'm so curious about this, too. I'll give you a quick taste. No huge spoilers here. It's all the usual suspects that are contributing to this trend. Economic factors that we've talked about a lot on this show that relate to job security, homeownership, affordability.
But really, it's this device that we keep in our purses, in our pockets, and we use to communicate with the outside world every single day that our phones is playing a bigger and bigger role in population decline, particularly in high- and middle-income countries. I don't want to say anymore. You're going to have to tune in to the show on Tuesday to hear why.
Are you saying our smartphones are making us less social? Because I find that shocking.
I know. It's such a shocker, Mark. I don't think anybody saw that one coming.
Catch Victoria Tuesday, not Monday, Tuesday of next week with that conversation here in the podcast feed. Thank you as always, Victoria.
A pleasure. Thanks, Mark.
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