Our analysts look ahead to RSA 2024
Brenon Daly directs the financial analysis of the 451 Research Market Insight and M&A KnowledgeBase products within S&P Global Market Intelligence. He is responsible for all financial coverage within those product lines, as well as supporting investment- and acquisition-related activity by investment banking and private capital clients. Brennon arrived at S&P Global Market Intelligence through its 2019 acquisition of 451 Research. Before joining 451 Research in mid-2006, Brenon worked at research boutique for technology-focused hedge funds, as well as trading equity and options on his own book. Brenon began his career in 1991 as a founding reporter at the first English-language newspaper in the former Eastern Bloc. Brenon moved to Vienna in 1995 to run the local bureau for United Press International before taking on an analyst position with the Economist Group, where he researched and wrote reports for The Economist Intelligence Unit and the regional publication of The Economist. In addition to earning a degree from the University of Kansas, Brenon studied at the University of Ulster (Northern Ireland) and the Vienna University of Economics and Business (Austria).
It might be a bull market for tech stocks on Wall Street but it's a bear market for tech stocks in M&A. The use of stock to pay for deals is tracking to the lowest level in at least two decades, even as tech shares hit record levels. That's a problem for the market because without this currency, acquirers tend to not be as free-spending.
Nobody is waiting more impatiently on a Fed pivot than private equity, which is suffering through the slowest start to any year in almost a decade. The US central bank's expected cuts of the historically high interest rates can't come soon enough for these credit-hungry dealmakers. Until then, there isn't much for them to do.
After a period of frothy financial distortion, the term "unicorn" is back to being something of a rarity in the venture world. That's especially true when it comes to the all-important metric for backers: exits. Most of the lofty billion-dollar valuations are still aspirational, rather than realized.
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