Author: Sam Allcock
There is still a certain grandeur to the London Stock Exchange on a calm weekday afternoon, with its marble floors, ticker screens, and the buzz of a structure that has witnessed the rise and fall of financial empires. However, the tone quickly changes if you spend a few minutes speaking with fund managers who follow small-cap British businesses. The exchange’s once-celebrated growth market, AIM, is the most obvious indication that something has quietly broken. AIM was founded in 1995 with the straightforward goal of providing young, aspirational British businesses with an easier way to raise capital and go public without…
These days, business news frequently features a certain type of moment. A company announces that it is relocating its headquarters from California to Texas. It may be a well-known brand or a more subdued mid-size business. It appears that no one is shocked anymore. The way weather reports turn into background noise after a certain amount of repetition has become almost routine. However, the numbers supporting that practice are substantial. Between 2018 and 2025, 725 companies moved their headquarters, according to CBRE, one of the biggest commercial real estate firms in the nation. Businesses are moving from high-tax, highly regulated…
When a flatbed tow truck arrives at a cul-de-sac at seven in the morning, a certain silence descends. Neighbors observe, but no one speaks up. It occurred twice for the same model Porsche Cayenne, two doors apart, in a subdivision in Atlanta last spring. That is no longer a coincidence; instead, it is a pattern that appears in repository logs all over the nation. For many years, it was assumed that owners of Mercedes-Benzes and Porsches would not have their vehicles repossessed. That presumption is not holding up. Delinquencies on luxury-tier loans are increasing, according to subprime and near-prime auto…
When iron ore prices begin to decline, a certain type of anxiety descends upon Perth boardrooms. It’s not very loud. Delays in making investment decisions, cautious language during earnings calls, and the way mining executives abruptly start discussing “diversification” after years of hardly using the term are all examples of it. That anxiety has reappeared, and this time it feels more like a structural shift that no one fully understands how to deal with than a fleeting dip. The arrangement was easy enough to explain to a teenager for twenty years. China constructs. Steel is needed in China. Iron ore…
Not needing anyone’s money gives you a certain kind of confidence. Stripe’s name keeps coming up in discussions at Davos this year—not as a business pursuing investors, but as one that investors are pursuing. In January, John Collison, seated across from Emily Chang of Bloomberg, stated unequivocally that there was no rush. Not next year, not ever, at least not according to a schedule that someone else has established. The adage “no rush” has more significance than it may seem. In 2010, Stripe was established. For a private company, especially one worth more than $100 billion, sixteen years is an…
At a BRICS summit every two years, someone declares that the dollar’s days are running out. Vladimir Putin has done this on multiple occasions; in 2024, he even held up what appeared to be a prototype banknote. The headlines write themselves, the cameras flash, and then, predictably, nothing happens. This pattern has been repeated so frequently that it has practically turned into a ritual. Lula of Brazil questioned the necessity of using the dollar for trade. Iran and Russia signed agreements to cooperate on sanctions. China pushed its yuan. Nevertheless, depending on whose statistics you believe, the dollar still accounts…
In 2020, when Toronto’s condo market felt more like a casino where everyone was winning than real estate, Vitor Almeida signed his pre-construction contract. He made a 20% down payment on a $675,000 Vaughan apartment, which at the time seemed almost too simple. The math just stopped working when the appraisal came back at $590,000 five years later. Even though the story is well-known by now, the people who are living it still find it to be extremely painful. Buyers like Almeida are trapped between a contract they can’t break and a bank that won’t assist them in fulfilling it…
The majority of people do not associate Greenville, North Carolina, with international trade. There isn’t a corporate campus, a skyline, or anything that says “headquarters.” However, the operational core of one of the most bizarre business stories of the past ten years—a YouTube channel that developed into something more akin to a consumer goods company than a media brand—lies somewhere behind its unremarkable strip malls. In 2012, Jimmy Donaldson—known to almost 500 million subscribers as MrBeast—began posting videos. Thousands of teenagers were posting gaming commentary at the time, which made the early content unmemorable. It wasn’t just talent that made…
When regulators begin sending civil investigative demands, a certain silence descends upon Washington. Envelopes ending up on desks at rival tech companies—no press conferences, no leaks. People who monitor these things professionally claim that Microsoft hasn’t experienced this level of pressure since the late 1990s, and that’s about how things are right now. The investigation by the Federal Trade Commission has been ongoing for over a year. It started during the Biden administration and has persisted into the Trump term, which surprised some who thought the new White House would ease off. A parallel review is being conducted across the…
Customers continue to enter and exit the Menlo Park branch on Sand Hill Road, which has been repainted in First Citizens green, as if nothing had happened. That is a portion of the issue. The physical evidence has disappeared three years after Silicon Valley Bank disappeared in about thirty-six hours, and the muscle memory has followed suit. Today, if you walk into any San Francisco founder dinner, the topic of discussion has shifted to hiring in Bangalore, model training expenses, and AI compute costs. Suddenly, banking risk seems like a 2023 issue. It isn’t. Eighty-six percent of corporate financial decision-makers…