Hello 10 Things on Wall Street readers! I’m Michelle Abrego filling in for Dan DeFrancesco today.
From why activist crusader Nelson Peltz is suing a Florida party planner to layoffs at fintech giant PayPal, there’s plenty to get into today.
Let’s get to it.
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Fidelity; General Atlantic; Jefferies Group; Goldman Sachs; Rachel Mendelson/Insider
1. Not everything in January was about layoffs.
While it looks as if layoffs will continue to dominate the headlines in February and potentially well into 2023, I want to turn to a more upbeat topic.
As you might know, for the last few years Insider has been highlighting some of the most talented young people on Wall Street. We started tracking up-and-comers back in 2017. Each year gets harder than the last, to pick 25 people that represent the future face of the highly competitive financial-services industry. Many have continued to excel at the same companies they kicked off their careers in, while others have made significant career moves, or launched their own ventures.
In mid-January, we had a party hosted at PayPal’s offices to celebrate five years of our list. Rising stars alumni from all different years came to catch up, network, and probably compare how good or bad their 2022s were.
Take a look at all the photos from Insider’s celebration of Wall Street’s rising stars here.
And if you have any suggestions for people to highlight for our 2023 cohort, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at mabrego@insider.com.
In other news:
Taylor Hill/Getty Images
2. Get ready for the “greatest tinderbox-timebomb in financial history,” the hedge fund advised by the author of “The Black Swan” has warned. Excessive borrowing has created a credit bubble that is due to spark a “catastrophic market failure,” said Universa Investment’s chief investment officer Mark Spitznagel.
3. PayPal cuts 2,000 employees. The layoffs will affect about 7% of employees and will take place in the coming weeks, CEO Dan Schulman told employees in a memo. Read more here.
4. How much is Silicon Valley hurting? Pretty badly if you’re looking at Fidelity’s new valuations of some former tech darlings. See the mutual fund manager’s latest markdowns of Stripe, Reddit, and Instacart.
5. Apollo, the trendsetter. A decade after the private-equity giant helped launch Athene Holdings, more private money managers are moving into insurance as they hunt for higher yields, the Wall Street Journal reports.
6. Billionaire Nelson Peltz claims he was “hoodwinked.” It’s not a bloated corporate conglomerate that the activist investor is waging a fight with this time, but party planners who worked on his daughter Nicola’s glitzy wedding to Brooklyn Beckham.
7. Highly paid men are working less. A new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that men with degrees who earn $100,000 per year or more are leading the charge to clock in fewer hours at work. Here’s why they’re not being quiet about it.
8. ChatGPT’s got some competition. Well, in the investing department at least. As Insider found out, the chatbot has not mastered markets yet. However, the $102 million AI Powered Equity ETF (AIEQ), an ETF that leans on IBM’s Watson supercomputer to balance its portfolio is beating the market by nearly 100%.
9. Twitter avoids bankruptcy, for now. The social media company paid off the first installment of the $12.5 billion debt this month to the seven banks that financed the deal. Insider previously took a look at why these banks even agreed to loan money to Elon Musk to take Twitter private.
10. From Goldman Sachs to the NFL. Adam Berry, head of US loan trading is leaving Wall Street to join the Philadelphia Eagles, according to Bloomberg. He’s not joining until May, but let’s hope they’ve offered him some Superbowl tickets.
Edited by Jeffrey Cane (tweet @jeffrey_cane) in New York and Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London.