Now we're going to talk to Peter Sunde on Skype. And he can see me only if I stand over here. So he is, of course, one of the founders of the Pirate Bay, as well as being part of Flatter and Hemlis. But I guess today is mostly about the dark side of innovation, being on the dark side of innovation, which you are, Peter. Right now, you could say, because if you would come here, you would risk being arrested, so therefore you're on Skype somewhere where we don't actually know where you are. So Peter, tell us how it is to be a misfit in Kyra's words. I don't know why someone would call me a misfit. Can you hear me, everyone? Yeah. Hello. Hey. I really don't like being from the dark side because I think I'm from the bright side, the only bright side, in both senses. I really, I loved what Kyra said, but it still is, I think we should all have different views on what the dark side really means. I'm going to tell you a little bit of a story about myself and what I've been doing, so maybe you can laugh at that or something. So I am actually both a hacker and a pirate. So I think I fit very well in with Kyra's previous two examples of people that go outside of the normal boundaries rather than being on the dark side, I think. So I started with computers when I was like nine, ten years old and the only way we could use computers at that time, almost 25 years ago, is by copying everything that we could find. Games and software, everything was just copies of everything else. So that's what we did and we never really thought about that. If that's good or bad, it was just the way it was. And that's kind of how we learned anything about computers and how we learned to do whatever we did. And most of my friends from that time are today working in computers in the IT industry and they have started lots of companies and everything. So we never saw ourselves as criminals, but today we would definitely be considered that. So when I grew up a bit, I found lots of other people that had similar background and they started a project called Pirotbyron, which was a wordplay with the Swedish group called Antipirotbyron, which was the anti-piracy bureau. So these guys, they started Pirotbyron by kind of showing that you could improve things by copying and remixing. So you took Antipirotbyron and turned into just Pirotbyron to show that the copy was better than the original instead. And it was kind of the way that Pirotbyron behaved all the time. So Pirotbyron was kind of a lobby group that discussed copyright and internet issues instead of just allowing the anti-pirates to just send out press releases saying copying is bad and so on. So they kind of wanted this discussion around anything about the internet. And well, the way we did it with Pirotbyron was that we always kind of made fun of our opponents and we laughed at them and we did lots of fun events. We've done everything from art to starting projects like the pirate bay. So out of this kind of group of weird people, we had this technology that we weren't really, it wasn't the key of Pirotbyron, but it was one of the biggest things that we ever did. And I think that we closed down Pirotbyron in like 2009 or something. And I think the only thing that I regret that we ever did was actually calling ourselves pirates because it's really aesthetically ugly. I don't like the whole eye patch thing and so on. So that kind of sucked. But we started the pirate bay and you've probably seen the logits like this, if you can see that. It's one of the biggest sites in the world. It still is and it's growing. And it came out of this need of using a new technology instead of the old file sharing technology. So we wanted to show the new technology called BitTorrent, which I guess all of you kind of know and it was not really anything from pirate bay that was big innovation.  So we didn't make any technology. We didn't do anything clever. We didn't have good software.  And I think that the only thing we did was to not close down and that was kind of the only goal. And I think that's the big difference between us and CASA and Napster and all of these guys because they kind of gave up because they had other goals than just being there for the people. And just to brag a little bit about the pirate bay, I know that you probably like the pirate bay quite a bit in the audience. Pirate bay is at sometimes half of the internet traffic in the world. So half of everything flowing through the cables on the internet are users of the pirate bay. And pirate bay has never been more than three people doing this as a hobby project. And out of them is one is an alcoholic, one likes drugs and there's a third guy as well. You can guess who's who. That's up to you. But sometimes we've actually had issues like someone from the crew just broke a cable and because he was drunk in the computer center and he actually tripped over a cable and half of the internet traffic vanished for three or four days. So it's kind of a weird situation. We have like one of the actual biggest sites ever in the world just for fun and totally not serious. So it's been very weird having this view of pirate bay from one side where people think it's a huge business and they send emails wanting to come to the head office or at least a local office somewhere to discuss things with us or and so on.  We also, together with the pirate pirate bay did a lot of weird stuff. Like we had a small, went to a small art festival in Venice, quite big actually, and did a project called Embassy of Piracy and was just asking people to send in small triangles of paper with their own drawings on them. And we just took a lot of pictures and we sent people send pictures of the internet and we printed them out and put them in a small box so you can look at that. But the Italian police heard that the pirate bay was in Venice and they were totally upset about that. So they actually went to the Venice spinal and did a raid against the art festival because they were upset the pirate bay was in Italy and we couldn't run pirate bay in Italy. So people are kind of confused about what pirate bay really is. And when pirate bay started growing to like this really large extent people became very upset in kind of the opponents and they started sending threatening letters to pirate bay and that's, I would say that's actually the thing that made pirate bay big. It's because they sent all of these threatening letters saying that we're gonna sue you for all of the money in the world and sometimes even more money than it's actually printed and they're really upset when we actually started replying to those letters in a way that they didn't really like. So for instance, I'm gonna try and show you something we did is we showed them, can you see this? It's the map of the world. So we showed them where Europe was and where the US was because it was usually companies from the US that always sent threatening letters saying like we are breaking the law in Illinois, Chicago, somewhere, you can't do that. So we just showed them pictures of polar bears saying that we have polar bears in Sweden eating us so we can't really discuss Illinois local copyright laws. And they didn't realize if we were joking or not and they just stopped sending the letters because nothing happened. And those typically what people were upset about this that we didn't kind of cave into the pressure from these companies and they were really, really upset. And we just thought it was fun but we also had this revelation once. We did one of the first crowdfunding things on the internet ever. We wanted to buy a small nation called Sea Land which is somewhere outside of Leeds in England. It's just a small platform. And we wanted to buy it because it was for sale and we didn't know how much money they wanted for it or anything. And it was kind of a joke. We just wanted to like see if people would think it was a good idea. So we started collecting money and we got like $25,000 in one or two days. And the people in Hollywood were really upset about this. So I remember waking up like two days after we started this project, I think we were still drunk, all of us. And we had this, I saw on, I think it was Larry King's show on CNN or something like that, where one of the top lawyers from Disney and the Prince of Sea Land were discussing what will happen when we buy Sea Land? What will happen with the international copyright legislation and so on? And they were really upset. And we just like drank beers and had pizza. That was the whole thing about it.  So in the end, Hollywood decided to send private investigators after us which I never really understood why because we did everything on the internet. So you can't really see what we're doing by placing a car outside of our homes. But it kind of shows that we have different realities that we live in. So in the end, probably most of you know Pirate Bay from the big raid in 2006 where the Swedish police sent like 40 police officers to take all of our servers. And they took 200 other servers as well. And it was just like a big mess. And we decided to not close down Pirate Bay at that time either which was kind of what they wanted. And that was probably the best PR stunt that Pirate Bay ever did was like just reopening after two or three days again, after that catastrophe. And the interesting thing was that you kind of get the feeling of how big Pirate Bay is also when you realize that the raid was an initiative from Hollywood going to the White House forcing the Swedish minister of justice to come there and talk to them about the Pirate Bay issue. And then them going back to Sweden and forcing the police to do a raid against Pirate Bay just six weeks after they said that Pirate Bay was actually legal in Sweden. So we kind of saw the issues we had with corruption and so on in Sweden as well because even the judge in our case happened to work for the pro copyright society in Sweden and so on. So it's been just a mess. And I think it's boring to talk about because it's just a court case. Even though we lost, we kind of won the PR case anyhow. So that's the important thing. And I also wanted to talk a little bit about this whole piracy thing is when we talk about piracy, we always talk about that as being outside the law.  And we always talk about how the industry should react to something. And I think the piracy is not just about faults in the industry. It's more like faults in what we can use things for. So I think that people are always looking for some sort of solution. I always hear that Spotify has solved the music problem with piracy. And for me, that's not true at all because there was nothing to be solved. Piracy gave us the possibility to copy whatever so we could reach new music and find new culture. And it's not about just the distribution of it which a lot of people talk about. So when they talk about Spotify, it's easy to access and so on. But when we use all of these solutions, we forget that we lose control over all of our data just as we do with all of the cloud services on the internet. So I'm really scared of talking about solutions because I think we're too much focused on that. And it's kind of the same thing when we talk about all of the new technology that comes out. We talk about innovation and we talk about iPads and smartphones and so on. I'm a little bit scared of those because I think it's not the perfect innovation because they're not meant for people to create things. They are meant for people to consume things. And previously we had a lot of discussions about how to be more creative and so on but we don't have the tools anymore. We don't create tools for being creative. We create just consumerist tools nowadays, anyhow. And instead, one of the issues I had always with all of these discussions is of course that when we talk about piracy, we always talk about people that don't create. But for me, it's always been this problem about who is supposed to be a creator. It's that we always talk about big musicians. We don't talk about the normal musicians that play music as a hobby or just do it for fun or whatever reason you have to make music. It's not always to make money. So then I was part of starting something called Flatter which has this logo. I'm doing very analog things today, which is kind of a Facebook like it's a system where you put money in every month and you decide how much money you want to spend on the internet.  And it kind of changes who is a creator because all of a sudden you can just Flatter comment on a news article and that will actually be money to someone who created something. So we can change kind of the value of creativity by looking at everything as creativity instead. And one of the things we learned with Flatter quite a lot is that there are issues with not only distributing things on the internet, but also about distribution of money on the internet. So in the midst of Flatter's kind of early started days, WikiLeaks got shot off with their funding on the internet and Visa and Mastercard and PayPal, all of these big companies that just shot off every possibilities WikiLeaks had of getting money. So in the end they came to Flatter and we were the only way you could actually give money to WikiLeaks. It kind of shows the same problem we have with the PayPal is that people are really scared of standing up for what's really important. So WikiLeaks had not been doing anything illegal. PayPal has not done anything illegal, but at the same time, we all get treated as criminals because we are going against kind of the power. And I think it was really sad to see that Flatter was the only company that would kind of go against the powerful corporations just to prove a point. And I think it's not just a question about piracy and so on and distribution, but it's a question about freedom of speech and democracy in the basic of all of this. So in Sweden, we had the FRA law, wiretapping law a couple of years ago. And we also had the iPad law, which allows companies to go and monitor the internet. So we started another project. Let's see if I have a sticker called iPadator. It's a VPN service, which allows you to get encrypted internet connection. So you just connect to iPadator and then you connect to the internet encryptively and no one can see who you are anymore. It's a very small and easy thing to do if you want to be anonymous on the internet. And people are really upset about us for allowing people to be anonymous even though it's a human right because the discussion about what can be done and what can't be done on the internet is never about what we should do. So it's been really sad to see the discussions about anonymity and so on. Lately, I can't speak today, sorry, I had too much coffee. But up until NSA and all of this prism and so on, we haven't really had a good discussion about our rights as people online. And I think it comes down to the same thing. It's all about using technology and so on to be anonymous, but it's not where the problem is. We should also do this politically and discuss what we want from our society. I don't know how much time I have left and I can't hear anything from anyone. I hear nothing. Two minutes. Two minutes, okay. I'll talk about Hemlis a little bit then. So as you said before, I also helped started Hemlis which was the first time I've done a project where people just gets directly what it is. And it's a small app like WhatsApp or something for your phone which allows you to communicate anonymously and using the same technology as with IP data and so on. So we're kind of doing all of these things. And the reason for doing this is not because we want to be entrepreneurs or anything.  I think that most entrepreneurs are, when they're successful, they turn into idiots and they want to be rock stars because we have this view of entrepreneurs as the new rock stars, but all of them are just, well, the same thing with rock stars and entrepreneurs like big egos and lots of money and privileges. So we should stop celebrating entrepreneurs and just celebrate innovation instead. I talked for more than two minutes, I think. Yeah, okay, that's it for me, thanks. All right.


Growing up in Philadelphia, Will Chamberlain was a frail child who nearly died of pneumonia. But after growing to 6'11 by high school, Will discovered basketball and later dominated the NBA for 14 seasons. He remains the only player to score 100 points in a game and average more than 50 for an entire season. Will Chamberlain, one of the game's original pioneers. Celebrating black history, I'm Megan Triplett.


The People's Democratic Party in Emo status demanding the suspension of two of its members from the House of Assembly be overturned. The party has described the suspension as unlawful. The two lawmakers, the Minority Leader Ayad Dike Mosul and Minority Whip Philip Eidgoghu, were suspended on July 8 for the alleged unparliamentary conduct. But the PDP argues that the suspensions are without fair hearing. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Hi again, thanks for joining us. I'm Tony Perez with OptiCos Design and here to talk to you about the regulating plan, the form-based codes version of a 3D zoning map. So thanks for joining us. So the regulating plan as we talked about in the opening introductory session, it's that 3D zoning map and we talked a little bit about the colors having a lot to do with physical form and character and use. And just as a refresher, the darker the color, the more intensely the property is used, the higher the lot coverage is, the taller the building is usually, and the more intense uses are on that parcel. The lighter the color, just the opposite. The lower lot coverage, the lower number of stories, the lower intensity of uses on that parcel. So knowing that, you can look at this and start to understand the physical character and intentions of a community's vision for a particular area that's using the form-based code. And so the regulating plan takes all that information, implements a vision by coordinating zoning districts to particular parcels, as you can see identified here on this example. And the types of regulating plans vary on what the intentions are for that area of the community. So we're gonna talk to you today about three scales of regulating plans that can apply to parts of a community or an entire community. So on the left-hand side, you see what we call a site-specific. And these are typically for downtowns, small-town main streets, a very specific area of a community that's using the form-based code. Or you can see here the multiple areas or sites approach, where there might be several corridors, maybe or maybe not a downtown or parts of a neighborhood. And this might be on one part of town and then on a completely different map showing a different area of town and there might be the rest form-based code area. Or the third combination of the form-based zones, you could see in the light purple and dark purple in the left-hand side of this third example. And then the conventional zoning, the yellow and the green and the red. And this is what we at OptiCodes call a hybrid code where it's combining areas that use conventional zoning and areas that use form-based zoning. And then there are types of regulating plans. So if this was all about the scale and approaches, these are examples of regulating plans on different types of projects. So on the left-hand side is infill preservation where the emphasis is new development and fitting into clear and existing patterns that you're making more of what already exists. And so this is where Santa Rosa fits on the spectrum of types of regulating plans. That the second one is a regeneration option where there is some existing development but there's a lot more new development that's going to be made and new blocks that don't yet exist. So it's regenerating land into new purposes and new vision. And then there's the third example, a green field where there is nothing that exists. It's a large vacant parcel that's going to be new communities or new neighborhoods at least. And so it's all undeveloped and yet to be developed. So let's talk about the infill development regulating plan examples. Here's one in Benesia where you could see the existing pattern with the existing buildings in black fill there. And in this particular example, there were a lot of historic buildings that were shown for reference purposes and also to identify the scale and character of new buildings. This is a great technique, but there's also the idea that, as soon as you do this, it might be obsolete in a year. And so we've learned in subsequent projects that this isn't necessarily a technique to use in bigger areas, bigger than Benesia, for example. Then there's the Richmond example where this is a set of corridors and a downtown. And so these zones are coordinating all the form, including more specific instructions you see there in black dots along specific streets. And that's talking about certain frontage requirements that are implementing the requirement to have active frontages or frontages that have frequent pedestrian entries and large openings and those frontage elements that we talked about in the first session of porches and stups and shop fronts and things like that, as opposed to blank sods. And then this third example in Davis, California, it takes the same approach of coordinating the zones with their physical form, including height and all kinds of other physical characteristics, but it starts to introduce new civic space intention by this community and then the approximate location of new streets to make new blocks. And then additional massing standards for the new buildings to coexist nicely with existing buildings of a much smaller scale. And then lastly here in San Rafael, one of the latest codes that we've worked on, a lot of information about the form and character through again the color of the zone district, but also this idea of subzones, which you saw in a couple of the other examples that I wanna identify here. The subzone is a way to take the base list of uses allowed in a form-based zone and either expand them by saying, by applying the term open. So making that list longer or by contracting those down to a limited set of uses for a certain area by applying the term limited. And so you can take one zone and use it in three ways in terms of uses and sometimes the kind of frontages that you want uses to be coordinated with. And then this one as in Davis, this regulating plan talks about intention for civic space and a couple of new blocks that are expected to be made out of super blocks that currently exist. And then as in a couple of the others, overlays about existing historic districts and existing plan development districts that aren't going to be converting to the form-based system. But you can see all the information that is applied to this form-based regulating plan, which again is embodying and implementing a vision, a physical vision prepared by the community for each of these places that we just showed you through some type of public process involving a charrette or design workshops that brought the community to a consensus about physical character for each of the different areas in this part of the community. So the form-based system uses that regulating plan as you can see there are different ways to use it but there are essential elements and approaches that provide for a certain consistency and expectation about how to use this tool and namely the colors on the zoning map and their intensity indicated by the darker or lighter color and then applying those physical characteristics such as civic space and new streets and new blocks and their approximate locations. And so taking all the policy, all the physical character vision out of the vision document and putting it into the regulating plans that can be implemented on a daily basis. Thanks for joining us today and look forward to your questions and discussion as the process continues. Thank you.


Hey friends tonight We are hanging out at the winter Orlando informer meet-up here at Universal Studios Orlando This is one of my favorite events because all of the food and beverage offerings are included in your admission price So you can drink as many butter beers and eat as many pretzels as you like and then there's also almost no weights for any Attraction so we're gonna ride some rides eat some food and have a beautiful Orlando informer kind of night Anyhoo's let's go do this And I'm very excited because I'm bringing my mom and sister. They are here We're going to the Orlando informer meet-up first time being at Universal Studios for my mom I am so excited to show you maybe we might get to see the Grinch and I like I said all the food We can enjoy it's gonna be a fun time. I Am so excited that I'm able to bring my mom to Universal Studios for the first time I always wanted to come here growing up But we couldn't afford it and now I get the opportunity to actually bring my mom to enjoy it for the first time And I love that and the Orlando informer meet-up is the perfect setting because I don't know how many rides She can ride I mean we're gonna see what she can ride But she gets to enjoy all of the benefits and activities of the meet-up and it's kind of worth it Like I said, it's the best deal out there We are all checked in and tonight's event goes from 7 p.m. till 12 30 but with your ticket you get into the park as early as 5 o'clock and Honestly, I always tell people this is the best bang for your buck if you ever plan on visiting Universal Studios Orlando because you really get the most out of it and it pays for itself. I Did a little bit of the math for you guys and if you registered for the Orlando informer meet-up for two nights It would cost you just around $350 and if I bought just two tickets to Universal Studios Orlando and add at the express pass to it It would cost me almost seven hundred dollars And that is such a huge difference and plus you're getting free food and beverages included in that So it's definitely worth it if you plan on making a vacation down there The Orlando informer meet-up is multiple times a year So it has different seasons and I love coming to the winter one because you get all of the Universal's holiday like festivities you get to see the holiday parade featuring Macy's and then also you get to meet the Grinch and I think the next one is scheduled February 3rd and 4th and tickets are still available So if you guys are interested I'll put a link in the description so you can check it out I think we're gonna start the day by heading into Universal Studios Florida side because my mom wants to catch the Macy's parade So I'm hoping that we are going to be able to it starts at five o'clock, but the parade starts at 5 30 So I think we have enough time to find a good spot First time on a red carpet here mom fancy they're rolling out the red carpet red carpet treatment And I'm also excited to have my mom try all the like foods from harry potter and butter beer for the first time And see what she thinks you know what I mean? I'm very excited like I love doing things I love doing first time things with people.  We got a perfect spot for you, right? The parade's gonna come down here and then it's gonna go down this way And then like I said, I think we're gonna try to back out and make our way over to islands of adventure So we're honestly in the best spot Like I said, I Enjoy coming to the winter meet-up because you get to do all of the holiday festivities And since it's my mom's first time coming I want to try to show her everything So we're gonna catch the Macy's parade and then we're gonna try to leave and then head over to island So we can get the Grinchmas show before the event actually starts We get really chilly and windy out so good luck to the balloon holders there because they're probably holding on for dear life Darryl mom The parade was a lot of fun. I think my mom really enjoyed it I caught her waving and saying Merry Christmas a couple of times Now we're gonna make our way over to islands of adventure try to catch Grinchmas Now I'm not putting a lot of this stuff in because the event hasn't even begun yet Like that's do you know what I mean? These are the things I just wanted to show my mom But we're gonna get into like the food and the rides Probably as soon as we get done with the Grinchmas because by that time I think it should start Now the adventure begins off to Grinchmas Grinchmas How did you like the parade? Did you like the parade? I love the parade. Yeah And it was so different because I've never seen those floats before y'all the Macy's. Yeah, the floats are fun Incredible how they handled that I know it's very windy out. It's cold. We might need to get sweaters. Yes And we have made it over to Grinchmas They say to be uh at the show at least a half an hour early So we're about 45 minutes early and I was thinking about maybe trying to ride the cat in the hat You want to ride the cat in the hat mom? I think that's a good idea. All right, let's do the cat in the hat We didn't make it to cat in the hat in time because we had to pull inside and get some sweaters A bunch of pennsylvania folk here saying it's cold in florida. How cold was it when you guys left this morning? 21 degrees and they're cold. They're cold now. I feel the same way. I say it all the time But I think we can say we are ready for Grinchmas. Look at this and now you got a little Grinch guy too Right on my shoulder. Yeah Merry Grinchmas It goes there's a magnet and it sticks under your shirt. We'll have to put it on and show you And now he just stays there Perfect. All right, let's go watch the show I've been trying to think of rides I think my mom could ride and I think cat in the hat would be one et maybe What do we say? Jimmy Fallon and Despicable Me? So a couple of them and I can't wait for the event to start so we can do that eat some food and try butterbeer All right, mom time to hear the how the Grinch stole Christmas Merry Grinchmas We got the perfect seat because we are front and center For max and the Grinch they both come out right there, but I'm so excited This is such a beautiful show Stories, stories, stories I must find some way to keep Christmas from coming But huh Grinch got a wonderful Awful idea. I know just what to do. Come on max And he left me in a scrotum and he made a quick Santa Claus hat and a coat And he chuckled and clocked what a great Grinchy trick with this coat and this hat I'll look just like snake me Speaking of rides What'd you think of the show mom? I loved it. Was it? It's so good It is it's honestly just such a well like put together production. Oh boy Yep, give her some open room and she'll leave us behind look at her Oh, no holy moly look at her go. Yeah It's such an incredible show. I loved it so much and I'm so happy I got to share it with my mom I kept peeking back at her and she was smiling ear to ear And it was great and then she got so happy when the snow came down and the Grinch I loved it so much and now I think the Meadlepast started it's eight o'clock. We time that perfectly And we can start getting some food and riding some rides. I'm I'm so pumped. I'm starving And since we're still in soos landing I think we'll head over to Circus McGurkis and get ourselves a roast beef sandwich Since that's on the menu tonight, and I'm so excited. They also have the pizza tots here too Which are really really amazing I just realized that the food doesn't start till nine o'clock tonight. So We're a little bit early to Circus McGurkis, but maybe we'll go ride some rides I think we're gonna go ride this soos trolley train. That's a ride my mom can ride. Look at it I think she'll like that a lot actually Unfortunately, I can't film on the rides, but it is a really fun ride And I'll let you know whether or not my mom likes it or not.  What did you think did you like that? Yeah, it's fun. Now now we're gonna do the cat and the hat five minute wait So we didn't wait for any of them. There's no weights at all. Yeah, right on fancy. Look at right on After we do cat and the hat I think me and bonbon are gonna go ride the Hulk because I mean that well that's a ride my mom Can't ride but it's something that my sister has never wrote Do you know who the cat and the hat is ma? Look at this is not anybody in line. I mean there's normally not anyone in line for the cat and the hat anyway But it's even special because I'm riding it with you guys You know what's funny about this ride they never show the parents faces I Don't know why they do that, but it's really interesting. Oh, there goes the cat and the hat right there All right, mom. What'd you think of the cat and the hat? I loved it. See I think you're loving universal, aren't you? So far. Yeah, you're really loving it. Yeah As we're making our way over to the Hulk we notice the Cinnabon is already open for the uh, Orlando Informer meetup Are you ready? We're gonna get some center of the roll Maybe some hot cocoa too. You want some hot cocoa? Oh, that sounds good It's so awesome. You just walk up and just ask and they give it to you You don't pay for it or anything and it just opened up and they're already at 72 dollars 72 dollars The center of the roll just looks so amazing and like I said, you can have as many Of these as you want.  What do they call sinna sweeties? I like the sinna sweeties better than the center of the roll. I wasn't expecting it, but they're so light and fluffy and airy Very good and they're hot Not a bad way to start off the night with some cinnamon rolls And then me and bonnie ended up riding the Hulk and she says it's one of her all-time favorite roller coasters You love it bon, right? Is Hulk better than Hagrid's though? I don't know. Yeah, you don't know She wrote she wrote Hagrid's but she didn't ride Velocico, so so we're gonna do that tonight too But I do love Hulk. It was so much fun and it was no wait Oh, yeah, there's tons there's more than two Oh, yeah, they're two different types. Yeah Stopped and grabbed some water and take a look at this 247 dollars already 247 dollars. Thank you. Oh and another bottle of water too Isn't it so nice and empty in here now? Look at it. You can just drive around And we got to keep our eyes peeled for the Grinch. He's actually hanging out here somewhere. He's out and about somewhere This is definitely one of my go-to stops here the roast beast the pizza tots everything Double fist in it on the chicken Caesar salad Can I get a slice of pepperoni? Thank you. Oh and pizza tots, please. Yes. Oh and a roast beast. Yes Oh also some apple pie. I don't know how i'm gonna What's happening? What's happening here? Where there's a will there's a way It still just blows my mind when you just walk into like somewhere and you just like I'll have one of everything Please and just take take take and look at this roast beast right here.  Look at that Now I do have to point out that some of this food is theme park food like the pizza and still theme park pizza So it's not going to be the best pizza in the world, but a lot of it is good food I mean we have wings fish and chips bread pudding Shepherd's pie roast beast sandwiches the dagwood sandwich lots of really cool like Like non novelty food that I cannot wait to show you My mom's like so excited look at her she's like The Grinch came in for like two seconds and then they told him he has to leave and he was real upset But we'll catch him my goal is my mom to meet the Grinch and just have a conversation That's all I want in life. I want my mom to talk to the Grinch We're done eating here. We're in hot pursuit of the Grinch. My mom's like I'm done She stopped eating the apple pie and everything It looks like the Grinch is uh, maybe taking a break So we'll come back this way because we're going to use the walkway from Grinch miss over to universal studios Now I want to head to Hogsmeade and I think it's time for my mom to experience the world of Butterbeer Oh, there it is mom straight ahead Hogsmeade Everybody gets excited to go to Hogsmeade. My mom doesn't even know what Hogsmeade is But I think you'll like it. Maybe you'll meet maybe your experience today will help you Uh go out and watch Harry Potter or read the books. You never know It's pretty magical Thank you Cheers to Butterbeer first time Here we go. Hope you get a Butterbeer mustache Good right Bonnie's team frozen that's crazy, but you haven't had hot either Right See I'm gonna tell you my ranking. I am hot Butterbeer number one cold Butterbeer two and then frozen three Just not my thing This guy delivering hot Butterbeer out here. This is the greatest thing. I think I've ever seen right there All right now the hot Butterbeer cheers Isn't that amazing It's always amazing when they're just handing out hot Butterbeer like that Just for everyone that's waiting in line because usually if you come to three room six This is gonna be one of the longest waits the whole entire night. Look at I don't even know. I look so weird in this Never mind Got ourselves some shepherd's pie. Hand me one of them fish and chips there. Would you now? Well, thank you good sir Excellent Oh Some pumpkin juice, thank you Is this parasite or have some parasite or two Look at this balancing act that my mom's got going on right now Oh Got ourselves a little shepherd pie right here. There we go. What's your think mom? What's your review? Yeah, shepherd's pie Pumpkin juice She likes the pumpkin juice Bonnie doesn't like it all. She likes the chips Bonnie's like I like the chips Seems like everyone liked three broomsticks except for Bonnie and now it's time to show mom The castle and then I think me and bonbon are gonna ride Velosa Coaster and I don't know we might skip Jurassic park and superhero island And maybe backtrack and make our way back over to Seuss landing and then over to universal side She said oh my goodness to this snowman I thought she was looking at the castle I thought she was like, oh my goodness. I need that for my yard That is so funny Who do you think's got the better castle mom disney or this castle here or hogging Then Cinderella castle Wow I'm shocked right look at Bonnie. She was too stunned to speak Now we're gonna go from harry potter to Jurassic park My mom said is this the way Look at this Velosa coaster 20 minutes bonbons first time. Are you excited? Yes. What did you think of Velosa coaster? I think that might be number one. Yeah. It was pretty it was intense. I love Velosa coaster. Mom, what did you think of Velosa coaster? Now we're gonna make our way back through Seuss landing and Over to universal. Hopefully we have a Grinch encounter Keep our eyes peeled You're a mean one Mr. Grinch Looks like we missed them. Oh man. Mean green ones know where to be found Can't even believe it I'm really loving how there's almost nobody in the parks right now It's really beautiful just to be able to walk around and be able to show my mom universal studio side for the first time when there's no crowds Look at this. We're about to head to new york mom the streets of new york new york Thank you If you've seen any of my other orlando and former meetup videos, you know, i'm in love with the bread pudding At finnigan's so we have to stop and get some and also see what else they have on the menu here They mixed it up a little bit this year Look at this really dull holy moly It's really empty here tonight Nobody's hanging out by the tree the performers are just dancing around there. It looks like mommy is just a walk on Oh, and there's something to get some performers over here There it is the love of my life The finnigan's bread pudding look at this I'm gonna grab myself a nice little scoops in a scoop of bread pudding And then extra whiskey sauce were you whiskers whiskey sauce me here bond give me the best whiskey pour you can look at that Much too good On top of the bread pudding it looks like they have buffalo mac and cheese pierogies and mummy sliders with jackfruit Here are the jackfruit sliders and then the buffalo mac and cheese That is looking good and the pierogies a lot of stuff I'm gonna probably pass on some of this one. I'm sure bomba. I don't get some I get so excited to get this bread pudding every single year It's not so much the bread pudding It's the whiskey sauce that does it for me and I always get extra How's that mac and cheese good? What kind of pierogi is it? Yeah, but is it potato? Is there different types of pierogies? Are there different types of pierogies? Calling it quits on finnigans, but look the blues brothers are out right now I feel like we're getting a lot accomplished. We rode one two three four Four five rides. Yeah. Yeah five rides got to eat at many different places got to watch the Grinch risk got to do the parade And I mean the event still goes on till 1 30 in the morning. So it's got a while yet. Look at this There she goes I Sometimes I just want to see where my mom's actually gonna go to there. She is I've been holding off on actually getting a lot of food because I know that there's a new taco stand that I really want to try And it's over by La Bamba and that's new this year because the taco stand the taco truck in simpsons is so popular They had to add another one because the lines were always so long So I think we're gonna head over there next then maybe ride transformers and maybe call it a night It's getting a little bit cold out for my mom. She's like With the snow she enjoyed inside the grinch miss the snow pier in new york. She was like, please no more Isn't this so pretty like the the new york city mom look at like the alleyways And wall greens drugs I'm pretty sure frankenstein. Oh the bride of frankenstein and frankenstein are over there So we're gonna head over there. See if we can get a photo together Mom I'm putting you on the spot. You can't be afraid of the bride of frankenstein and frankenstein What they're nice they're not even monsters Can't we not have a family photo together? She won't come really look it Hi, how are you? Please do yes Two of my favorite people. Hi. How are you my mom over there? It doesn't want to come up and say hi because she's afraid and I don't understand why she's Oh my lord That was the best thing ever I feel like She's she's gone gone she's gone gone She really really is gone. Oh my lord Wow, well, we'll get a picture bud That was so funny. I cannot even believe my mom flew off like that one frankenstein started chasing her and like It was really good. She is She's like she is so gone I'm pretty sure she's all the way up there, but I want to get tacos at la bomba I don't know what to do. La bomba is right there. That's the new taco spot Come get some tacos You This way We're going to get tacos this way Mom will not be joining us for some tacos. She has given up frankenstein frankenstein's monster basically Have ruined the taco experience from my mom. Well, that's okay. Yeah But I'm excited. This is a brand new eater eat spot here for the Orlando informer meetup And I'm all about tacos Look at this. We got pulled Chicken tacos. We've got the sweet potato the beef and they got a little build a taco section here Mangle lime. Look at that. That's a good stuff salsa guacamole all of it All right, let's get into these tacos a little bit. I'm very excited I feel like like I said, I think we got a lot done tonight But the highlight has got to be frankenstein's monster and my mom. She's literally shaking in her boots over there It's so funny. She's gonna look at she's so paranoid Mmm the beef oh so good I had to get all of them to try each one. I mean they're very small like, you know Five-inch tortillas, but look at this sweet potato one Here we go. Wow I can't tell you which one I like more But I'm gonna go in for the chicken now. They're all so good and I love the peppers in them There we go chicken The sweet potato one is the one that I want. It's the best. Also, look at mom over there You want high alert? He's on the other side of the building. He's not gonna come running through mel's to get you Even though mel sometimes turns into mel's die in instead of drive in My mom is super afraid we have to cut through mel's drive in To avoid frankenstein's monster.  He doesn't see you mom right right right Look at that didn't even see you there. You're good. You're in the clear You're in the clear Why is she driving so fast? You're in the clear And with that, I think we are done here tonight. It was a fun night. It's definitely a little chilly out So I think we're gonna wrap it up But so amazing. Like I said, if you guys want to check out the Orlando informant meetup I'll put a link in the description. It is well worth it All of the food that we ate and we drank and everything tonight was all included in the price Like we didn't have to bring cash in with us. So that is absolutely fun You know what I mean? Just to walk around just be like, no, I'll take that I'll take that and you get to try things that you would normally never try You know what I mean? I'm pretty sure none of us would have ever ordered the fish and chips at three broomsticks None of us would have ordered it, but we got to try it. You know what I mean? And uh, yeah now my uh vomit sister here So we're gonna have fun doing other things some things around disney some things outside the parks and Thanksgiving the holidays together. It's gonna be amazing. So I hope you guys enjoyed the video I enjoyed making it. We'll see you next time Bye Worst part of universal is the walk out Yep Oh boy somebody just ran into that pole Max speed it. Oh there we go max speeding it now. There we go


Hello and welcome to the deal room and hope you had a great Easter if you did indeed have a break and We're going to jump straight into a review of the first three months Q1 is done in the bag So how have things been performing in the corporate finance world? So I've got our director of corporate finance Stephen who's going to talk us through an update across the entire sphere from M&A IPO P and VC so Stephen, where would you like to start on that list? Yeah, let's let's start with mergers and acquisitions It's the thing that students tend to think about when they think about IBD and it's obviously Relatively exciting and we've spoken a lot about big deals that have happened so far in Q1 2024 but I just wanted to Yeah, do a little bit of a reflection episode and just think all right What's going on across the world in these different areas of IBD? What are the trends and what are the good elements and what are maybe some of the structurally weaker elements as well? so starting with M&A The story is relatively strong There are a lot of reasons why the deal volume and deal value of M&A deals in Q1 2024 has gone up in almost every region We're looking at the same screen in front of us at the moment and and M&A deal volume and value is up. So deal value is up 79% in Canada 51% in the US 58% in Europe which translates into a 24% increase globally weighed down interestingly by Asia Ex-Japan down 40% Japan down 54% Australasia down 27% I'm trying to get my head around why these deal volumes and values in Asia are down so much. You have any idea? Perhaps it's been the surprised robustness of North America when everyone if you think go back What not even 12 months was fearful of recession now the narrative already flipped some time ago to soft landing whereas there's still Quite clear concerns about the situation in China and China being so dominant in the region Perhaps there's just too much risk Surrounding that and it ripple effects around that Far East perhaps Yeah, yeah, I would assume it's something China related It's China has been soft for quite a long time And and it just doesn't seem like there's a lot of interest in doing deals and obviously the The big deals are the ones that are going to move the needle in the US As seen four or five of those massive deals I think we spoke about Capital one and discover financial and synopsis and ansys and diamond back. These are all 25 billion dollar plus deals. I think of 14 transactions over 10 billion dollars this quarter So this is you know, so this is the M&A market really starting to kick off We were having this conversation this time last year We wouldn't really have anything to talk about because hardly any M&A was getting done Now why the reasons behind this? I mean firstly interest rate stabilizing Nice Conversely a nice tone coming out from the Fed good poem coming out from Andrew Bailey At the Bank of England that it's looking like interest rates are not going to go up anymore And they're probably going to fall as soon as there's stability Confidence starts to seep in and let's remember interest rates, although they've been at their high They it was the quickest hiking cycle since the 1980s. You'll know this better than I You know five and a half percent interest is not it's not particularly high historically And we've had extreme bull markets from an M&A perspective and from a stock market perspective When interest rates have been up at this level, this is not dramatic by any stretch of the imagination So much like the stock markets as soon as there is stability Confidence starts returning. So we've had this wonderful Goldilocks not too hot not too hot not too cold economy Inflation's been dropping nicely, but there hasn't been recession consumer spending as as return house prices have started to kind of creep back up again and remember It's only two or three years ago that we had this huge huge wave of Helicopter payments and quantitative easing and zero interest rates. So there's trillions of dollars of cash still lying around on the balance sheets of these companies and on the and on the kind of Fundraising of these private equity firms. So as soon as it almost feels like any excuse To go out and do these deals is going to be pounced upon and just having this period of calm You know you've seen S&P break through records and the same is going to happen with M&A. I I Would predict that this trend of increased Your volumes and values is just going to continue for the end of the year and if not gain more and more momentum I don't know. I don't know what you think and yeah, that's super interesting the way he describes it actually because having lived through the source European crisis the financial crisis The recovery out of COVID has been so quick actually. I know it feels like such a Negative time for so many people for so many different reasons with layoffs and cost of living crises and things of that nature But the speed of which this is recovering now. It just seems like yeah, like you said it was only two years ago in a heightened state of fear and anxiety and uncertainty in the market and here we are and And yeah stock market's record high M&I M&A deals are starting to fly back in it's incredible the pace of change actually. Yeah, I haven't seen that this quick Yeah, and it's going to be it's going to be a mad year for M&A bankers You know you think about this combination. So there's a combination in the market at the moment of listed companies listed corporates with relatively high share prices because There's been a decent run for the last year Which means if you're buying a company with in part your own shares, you know, that's going to be a better deal for you The credit markets are opening back up again. So the availability of debt is Is a more available and be at a more reasonable cost? and on the flip side and we'll talk about private equity later on the availability of potential of companies that are up for sale and Is like there's never been before there's there's going to be thousands of private equity exits coming on the market potentially sold to these corporates that have got Nice debt and a nice share price with which to go and buy these companies So it really is, you know, it's going to be a mega year I think from and if you're a Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan banker, you're not going to get much sleep But you are probably going to get paid quite nicely. Yeah The question there, you know, you having done that very role in early part of your career, I'm assuming there's some different Responsibilities and what's expected of you dependent on serial seniority of where you sit from MD all the way down So you're kind of grad analyst, but I was reading a few things about Yes, it's looking good because then yeah, the bonus pool gets topped back up But a lot of the junior bankers were saying that back to a minimum hundred hour weeks things of that nature There's there's because of the reduction that you've seen in a lot of the more purest Investment banks like Goldman Sachs, for example, it's just even more work put on to the fewer employees and The deal flow just keeps coming so more gets expected So how does that get balance itself out? Yeah, and and obviously again if we were doing this podcast this time last year, we'd be talking about layoffs We'd be talking about Goldman Sachs axing a few hundred investment bankers and other other investment banks following suit So it is this You know, there's probably these are probably leaner divisions that are now going to have to face a much higher Heal volume and and that will lead to longer hours for sure I think the junior ranks have been culled a lot less than the senior ranks in these kind of In these waves of redundancies, so I think we're okay from that perspective I think it serves a wider point and we we try and make the world of investment banking Accessible and interesting and to an extent exciting through our simulations But we also have to remind people that if they're up for a job in M&A as much as we would love to say that There's work-life balance when there's this much deal flow coming through and Working on a deal just to get even a small deal across the line as thousands and thousands of hours of work It's hugely complex. So yeah, this is not a job for the faint heart And it's probably going to it's probably going to be quite brutal for the next year So the mind the mindset I guess that you would give as advice is that actually if you can pivot and survive the intensity You're going to accelerate your exposure to deals, right? And your experience is going to double down You're going to learn things quicker faster if you can get outside the other end You're going to be a really good place surely. Yeah, and as you get more senior either in M&A or in what in any advisory you are you are Benchmarked by the deals that you've done and if you are thinking about writing your own mini banking CV It will be worked on X transaction with Y complexity and Z geography and If you join an investment bank and all you're doing is pitching for a year It doesn't look that good on your CV. So yes, it might be brutal But if you could get two or three creds two or three tombstones as we call it back in the day It's be these I'm sure they're still physical little physical Well tombstones physical little trophies to say that you have, you know, you have worked on a particular deal You get a few of those under about early in your career. Yes It probably does set you up with the experience and knowledge that maybe someone in a in a less Overwhelming market may not get Okay, so we said here M&A then is picking up pace However, we tend to talk about IPOs is nearly every episode it would seem and they do seem like they're picking up as well But how does that look like as a balance between income for these bankers in terms of IPO deals Versus M&A deals Yeah, you put you put out a couple of good charts maybe last week or the week before on on LinkedIn talking about, you know year-to-date Best performance across investment banks and I think we we chatted on the pod that JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs tends to top out Both in terms of M&A specifically and investment banking more generally But I'll share with you a I'll share with you another another chart that looks at the split of investment banking revenue across these top 10 banks and across M&A versus equity equity capital markets bonds Debt capital markets and loans usually is leverage finance so related to private equity I'm just looking at JP Morgan, which is the number one bank in terms of overall IBD fee income 15% up relative to this time last year and it does it's made 32% of its money through M&A 15% through equity capital markets 27% through debt capital markets and 27% through loans Now Goldman Sachs is more heavily weighted to M&A with over 50% of its IBD income But if you go down to the likes of Wells Fargo and BMP and Deutsche Bank and Barclays They they generate the majority or a significant minority between 40 and 60% of their entire IBD income Through bonds through debt capital markets and it is something that I think we need to dedicate a bit more time on it to the pot You know on the pod Because it's a massive chunk of these companies revenue certainly in Q1 2024 that might change a bit throughout the year But it's a significant source of fee revenue and it's one that we tend to not talk about and tend to forget a little bit So just to give a little bit of insight very top level a lot of people listening students might not have even heard of Debt capital markets. So how does that differ in terms of what you're working on and the place and intensity to some of the other areas? We've just discussed Yeah, so debt capital markets. I think the way the way that I like to think about it is You have two ways of funding a business right debt and equity. You have two types of equity private equity Raising money for companies that are private investing in private companies and public equity Raising money and investing in companies that are public same goes for debt. You have private debt which is Lending money in the private markets through normal loans And then you have public debt which is lending money to companies and governments through public loans or bonds and debt capital markets is all about the origination and execution of high yield and Investment grade bonds which are subsequently very heavily traded as they you know much like a secondary public equity market so it is it is a Massive area and it is one that is it's got similar levels of intensity to equity capital markets You still work extremely hard. I would say maybe there's slightly less Slightly less time pressure and deadline pressure in the world of debt capital markets may be relative to M&A where you need to get a Bidding by the cutoff day and you need to get this deal done by the end of quarter or whatever it might be in the Exclusivity period runs out in 30 days time or whatever it might be So maybe it's not quite as intense seven a but it's certainly on a par with equity capital markets You don't necessarily quite get the excitement of an IPO But all of the other stuff you do is is really really quite interesting So yeah, I mean actually when as you described if you're talking about a BNP or someone like that, you're the money makers. Oh Yes, absolutely, and I used to work at HSBC and I quickly realized having done M&A for the first bit I quickly realized that lending was it was where it was at the company for banks with big balance sheets a Lot of money that they can possibly lend You want to go to the you want to go where the bank is absolutely flying It's a general rule for any young person entering the bank And if you're HSBC or if you're a BNP you go to lending you go to debt capital markets, etc Final question on that just before we move on to some of these IPO details then is there much Transfer between people going from DCM to ECM and vice versa yeah, there's definitely there's a lot of transfer between ECM and Leverage finance and corporate lending because the fundamentals it's all about credit It's and it's all about the credit worthiness of that particular company So the metrics you look at the ways of analyzing companies are Pretty similar whether you're on public debt private debt leverage finance Moving from debt capital markets to equity capital markets and to M&A and vice versa Yeah, it happens and you'll often be on a pitch with a combination of the M&A team That's presenting the potential acquisition opportunity And then you get the equity capital markets teams to talk about how they would finance it And then the debt capital markets teams to say hey, you could get a bond away that would support this acquisition So there's quite a lot of cross-pollination between the three and therefore, you know, you do get movements between those three different teams Already made me think in my mind's eye Because you know, you and I have a little competitive spirit and if you're teaching banking and I'm teaching markets Or if you're pitching a raising funds via the equity capital markets, I'm doing it through debt It must be quite an interesting dynamic when you're when that's playing out Yeah, and it's and it's actually It's actually Difficult because there is a there is a right there is to a large extent a right answer in terms of the way that your capital structure The combination the mix of debt and equity is put together and that will probably get decided within a you know in one of the meeting rooms within a bank and Maybe the final decision maker might be the M&A director that's potentially running the deal and go no No, it makes more sense to be more heavily weighted on the debt capital markets pitch So we're going to put that as item number two in the presentation and put the equity capital markets down to item number three because Do they need to really raise money in the public markets for this? Probably not. So yeah, it's it's a really interesting dynamic. And as we've said before, there's quite a lot of egos out there as well All right, and then percentage wise then just give us some context. How is the IPO market performing? Yeah, so yeah moving on to IPOs. We've spoken a lot about IPOs in the last four weeks and and obviously my my big buy read it up 70% since IPO'd so I'll be cashing that in Change my job from long-term stable investor to day trader. I think But yeah, no, so from from from equity capital markets and IPO perspective There's been 40 IPOs in the u.s. So far this year, which is 18% more than last year There's been some big IPOs a number of which we have spoken about And it's kind of it's up. I was just looking at stats here It's up 361 percent in europe that's 7.3 billion dollars that must be That must be related to some of the companies we're talking about a couple of weeks ago Douglas our favorite company and gal derma gal derma is responsible for You know a third of that if not half of that on its own So that's a that's an extraordinary increase And quite representative of the fact that there were just zero IPO activity. That's all in europe last year I still couldn't find by the way. I still couldn't find a q1 london stock exchange IPO I don't know if I was just looking in the wrong places. I don't know if have you reported on any Well, I like the way that when you look at these kind of there's lots of different data vendors that you can use to look at investment banking scorecards to kind of slice and dice all these statistics up in real time and Yeah, I know we've left europe But you would have thought there would have been a london item on the list, but london doesn't even exist anymore in in the ui of that website that we use so Probably says it all really It's bad and as I said, I just don't think I've seen an IPO of any any significance If if any significance if if any IPO in london over the last quarter, which isn't which isn't great But maybe we'll get she in who knows um So just a couple of stats and I think this is really important to to zoom out and think about the equity capital markets team that runs the IPO process within a bank and often we Almost use equity capital markets and ipos is is almost interchangeable But if you're looking again at the stats from q1 and you're looking at the top 10 equity capital markets banks Got morgan stanley in first place jp morgan in second goldman sacks in third and Their split of fees across different equity capital markets products is quite interesting so follow on Which means things like rights issues So when a company's already public and it wants to do another equity raise within the public markets That was 61 percent of morgan stanley's fee income on the equity capital market side That compares with only 28 percent on the IPO side with 10 convertible bonds yet to equity And it's the same every single one of these top 10 companies over 50 percent of its fee revenue is follow on So again We love talking about ipos because they're fun and they're interesting Where the money's at is follow-ons is rights issues is is additional funding through the public markets And it makes sense, right? You only IPO once but you need to raise money multiple times if you're doing expansion So surely you put your your crack squad on the IPO because if you can win the IPO Yes, proportionally it's 28 percent for morgan stanley But that leads to the follow-on the more ipos you execute surely the more revenue you get later down the domino the fair and and and I'm very uh, I'm very biased towards startups, but I use the startup analogy You know to be to go from zero to one as a as a nascent company to get a product or company off the ground That is extraordinarily difficult And then to run that company is hard But it's not as hard in my mind anyway And it's a little bit like it's a little bit like this with IPO It's like it is very hard to convince a market that a company is worth going public at a certain price To put together all the materials to do the sales pitch, etc Once that company's public doing the follow-ons. Yes, there's some convincing. Yes, there's some meetings to be had But you're already a known entity so it's more of a kind of More transactional maybe than the IPO process is so yeah, definitely put your crack squad on the ipos And from a career bringing it back to career visibility then so would I be right in saying you'd have an investment? Bank with its banking division Which would then have within it equity capital markets, which would then have within it teams that would sit in follow-ons convertibles or ipos And so you kind of go down that way or would those lighter points again cross pollinate They would say I I would probably say on the and it varies by different bank But on the equity capital market side, you would be split by region Okay, and then if you were to split again, it might well be sector Uh, you should as an equity capital markets bank could be able to do all three of those things There might be a separate convertibles team because it's got that debt and equity piece in there Um, but yeah, you should be relatively good at doing both IPOs and follow-ons Okay, cool. Make sense. So let's move on then. Let's talk a little bit about PE private equity Yeah, this is super interesting and i'm referencing the bane global private equity reports 2024 quite a lot in this piece and we'll put it on the show notes So we'll put it on linked in it's a really really instructive report of a Of an asset class that's just super super interesting and The reason why it's interesting. I mean 2023 was a bad year for private equity in terms of deal values And exit values. So deal value fell by 37 percent the amount of uh private equity company exits i I the private equity fund Own a company and I need to sell it in order to realize the upside That fell by 44 percent however Lots of big funds came to market. So fundraising was basically flat So you've got a decrease in deal value You've got a decrease in the number of exits, but you've got assets under management going up consistently year on year What does this mean this means that there is so much dry powder out there So dry powder mean meaning uninvested money sitting within a fund And it also means that there are so many companies that need to be sold In fact, this report says that Nearly half of all global buyout companies have been held by the fund for at least four years Remember a private equity fund cycle You tend to accept that your money is locked up for five to seven years But beyond that you start really agitating to get your money back And you as a private equity firm want to hold a company no longer if you possibly can in five years So you basically got I think we reported it last week. You've got three trillion dollars 28 000 companies That are waiting to be sold effectively when the timing is right and this is kind of why i'm saying This is going to be a bumper m&a pananza because in order to return Funds to to investors to limited partners within these private equity funds. They need to realize liquidity they really need to realize exit events and They're going to have to do so relatively quickly So again, just as we see a little bit more stability just as we see a little bit more Um certainty over interest rates the leverage loan market starting to open a little bit I think you are going to see Hundreds and hundreds of private equity exits Remember private equity firm can either exit through IPO It can exit to a corporate You know, we spoke about that about that earlier on in the pod or it can exit to another private equity firm And if you think about it Private equity, what has it got? It's got loads of dry powder And on the other side, there's trillions of dollars worth of companies needing to be sold. I would expect Logically that this is going to be a bumper 2024 for private equity to private equity deals So a company needing to sell because they've realized the value within that five-year holding period And then another private equity firm with loads of dry powder We need to buy because they're sitting on money that needs to be used Buying off another private equity firm and saying look we can extract more value We can take, you know, we can pump a little bit more debt into this company and it gets kind of past the parcel Around private equity firms As these dynamics continue I love that. It's just like how can we make money out of money? It's brilliant Absolutely, and there's some really interesting dynamics here as well, you know So we've spoken. I think we've spoken briefly about net asset value financing. It's, you know, Securitizations and and things like continuation funds a continuation funds are where the likes of Apollo Will set up a fund to basically buy the companies from their other funds In order for their other funds to return money to their limited partners And for the new fund who raise money on the back of some really really good companies that are coming to it So yes Money making money making money I think has been the kind of watchword for private equity over the last 20 or 30 years But they're extremely good at it and there's some there's interesting things like the secondary market for private equity opening up Which again is going to give a whole new flavour to the to the industry So right that that jenga tower is looking pretty solid for the time being so it's all right I won't pull any of the the blocks at the base out anytime soon But and it's it's it's really interesting because it as an asset class private equity just has been so It's just performed so well over the last 20 years It's it's just a case of Is this is this entrenched is the fact that you have to lock up your capital for five years You know, is that the downside that is offset by the upside of you've got, you know A long term a more long term approach with a more focused management team with access to more leverage finance Products relative to the public markets. Maybe it is structurally A more remunerative more lucrative Asset class But maybe it's not maybe it's cyclical and maybe we're about to Hit a kind of a decade long private equity trough So is it would it be right in thinking then that there's quite clear parallels between the state of play there and the state of play in venture capital Yeah, it's yeah So venture capital is the last one going to talk about and obviously venture capital is a subsection of private equity Remember when we talk about private equity, we usually talk about buyout firms that are buyout funds that are buying the entire company And I'm putting a bit of debt in there and trying to improve it and turn it around venture capital Still private equity. It's still private capital And yeah, the dynamics are relatively similar. I was just looking at some of the stats here So venture capital sitting on 69 percent more dry powder More investable money Than the five-year historic average So it's got money to deploy and 2023 was such a shocking year That it's almost like we're all pent up all this money is pent up the money hasn't gone And this is why 2024 25 And I want to be overly bullish, but you can see the way that stock markets are going on any hint of good news You know, there's just so much money out there to be deployed in the event of good news And vc very very similar dynamics And you've also got the excitement of artificial intelligence and agi you know massive massive fundraisers for very very very small companies We've we've reported this earlier on this year with mr. Allen co here Um, there's some big. Yes some big deals being done and a lot of money waiting in the wings Is it a good time to go out and raise money as a startup? I would say probably yes This time last year I would have said no and the reason why I say yes is I think that Adventure capital investors got a little bit burnt by all of the easy money and soft bank and everything of about three or four years ago And in 2022 23 got their act together and said look, we're not just going to fund anything We need to fund fundamentally strong founders and fundamentally well positioned businesses with Interesting technology and interesting economics, but we will fund you because we've got all of this dry powder So it's going to force you as a founder to really think about a robust business plan and a robust business model But the money is there if you get it right. So I think it's a really it's a really interesting environment Okay, well, I'd actually think that that's a good a good note to finish on and what I'm going to do is say two things to conclude Um for one, we've obviously talked about some different areas here So if you're a student, I'd be quite keen via the poll if you're listening on Spotify to hear Which one of these areas sounds the most interesting to you from what we've discussed So we've got m&a equity capital markets. So let's say ipos, but also some of the other activities that Stephen discussed pe And we'll splice that off and have um We'll have vc, but I'll also put in their debt capital markets as well. Definitely put in some debt. Yeah, let's have Let's have all what five and let us know I'll be really interested to know and then secondly if you do find This conversation useful or any of the other previous episodes, please do Share it with a friend Because you know, we bumped into a few people over the last couple of days They said it really helped them when it came to securing their spring weeks because that's a lot of the activity We're having with students at banks at the moment. And so if it helped them, you know, don't Keep it to yourself spread the love let other people listen as well because we're here to help And to make some of this stuff interesting and hopefully we we hit the mark And if you're a business owner because I do know that business owners and people who work in a variety of different professions who are Well grown up like me and Steven They listen for for different reasons whether interest in finance or because they are running a business They want to know what's going on in the economy and what's happening in the business world So yeah, spread the love I'd be much appreciated by Steven and I but Steven has always Great great insights and thank you very much Thanks so much, hon