The Three Big Transitions Reshaping Finance

Ever since Covid disrupted our lives, two themes have emerged. First, a feeling that we are living in an antechamber to a new and still-undefined era. And second, a pattern of hybrids, from homes converted into hybrid spaces of living/working/schooling, to expectations of a new office hybrid that will mix virtual and in-person meetings.

But what about the world of finance and securities markets? There, too, we can find patterns of transition and hybrids. Consider three phenomena that began before Covid but have exploded in growth since then: digital assets, Robinhood, and SPACs.

Start with the rise of cryptocurrencies, digital tokens and other such assets, which remain very much in a transitory stage (like the “Wild West,” SEC Chairman Gary Gensler recently observed). Even as the crypto asset class has grown to an estimated $1.6 trillion, basic questions remain unanswered. Are digital tokens securities or commodities? Are decentralized finance platforms really securities exchanges? Are data miners and other digital service providers really broker-dealers? Should the SEC permit Bitcoin ETFs? And who should regulate these products, services and entities—the SEC, the CFTC, or banking regulators?

Gensler has called on Congress to give the SEC “additional authorities to prevent transactions, products, and platforms from falling between regulatory cracks.” Specifically, he wants “additional plenary authority to write rules for and attach guardrails to crypto trading and lending.” And the U.S. House has passed a bill (H.R. 1602, the Eliminate Barriers to Innovation Act of 2021), which would require the SEC and CFTC to establish a working group on digital assets.

Some of what passes as crypto innovations pretty clearly seems to be old-fashioned investment products dressed up in digital garb. That would include any stablecoins that function like money market funds and those tokens that fall within the definition of a security. Nonetheless, there is no denying that crypto mixes digital technology with traditional forms of finance in a hybrid of innovation.

Second, consider Robinhood, which has exploded into view along with Redditor-fueled moonshot trades in meme stocks. Its proclaimed mission “to democratise finance for all” may invite skepticism, but the company can make a strong claim to having attracted a surge of first-time retail investors, representing a younger and more ethnically diverse customer base. Powering that success is Robinhood’s sleek mobile app—and its arsenal of gamification tools to entice and engage customers. But do the nudges and gamification tools cross the line into the realm of investment advice?

“Once individuals become customers, Robinhood relentlessly bombards them with a number of strategies designed to encourage and incentivize continuous and repeated engagement with this application,” the Massachusetts state securities regulator alleges in a lawsuit against Robinhood. The complaint points to several such techniques, from celebrating customer trades with confetti (a practice Robinhood has since abandoned) to plying customers with lists of most-traded and most-popular securities on its platform.

Should practices like these be subject to the fiduciary standard of an investment adviser? Or to the new Best Interest standard for broker-dealers? Robinhood has called the regulator elitist and says it isn’t making recommendations. Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit, these gamification techniques make Robinhood appear different in kind from the (boring?) practices of traditional broker-dealers that merely execute customers’ trades. The gamification of mobile trading apps may represent a hybrid between standard broker-dealer practices and full-fledged investment advice.

Third, consider SPACs, which have been around since 2003 but have exploded in popularity in the Covid era. In a hugely successful marketing campaign, SPACs have presented themselves as a kind of poor man’s private equity. If true, that would make SPACs a hybrid between private investment opportunities and public markets.

The deSPAC merger—the key event in the life of a SPAC—is also a hybrid. This is when the SPAC merges with a private operating company, allowing the target to become a public company without going through an IPO. Or is the merger itself really an IPO?

That’s precisely the question raised by John Coates, a Harvard Law professor who has become a top SEC official. In a provocative speech on April 8, Coates argued that the deSPAC merger is an initial public offering, because it is the first time the private operating company is introduced to the public. One speech, however, does not make SEC policy. And Coates’ theory remains untested in court. Nonetheless, it suggests how the deSPAC merger can be considered a hybrid between traditional forms of IPO and merger transactions.

At a House Financial Services subcommittee hearing on May 24, Michael San Nicolas, Guam’s delegate, asked how a SPAC differed from a closed-end equity (mutual) fund. The question may have seemed arcane at the time, but in retrospect it appears to have foreshadowed a series of blockbuster lawsuits against SPACs. Former SEC Commissioner Robert J. Jackson, Jr. and Yale Law Professor John Morley have joined in a lawsuit against Bill Ackman’s SPAC, Pershing Square Tontine Holdings Ltd. (ticker: PSTH), which raised $4 billion to become the single largest SPAC, and followed up with suits against two other SPACs, GO Acquisition Corp. and E.Merge Technology. The suits allege that the SPACs are really investment companies, like mutual funds and ETFs, because they invest in securities while searching for a merger partner.

“Under the [Investment Company Act of 1940], an Investment Company is an entity whose primary business is investing in securities,” the lawsuit against PSTH argues. “And investing in securities is basically the only thing that PSTH has ever done.”

Ackman says the suit against his SPAC is meritless, but warns, “Because the basic issues raised here apply to every SPAC, a successful claim would imply that every SPAC may also be an illegal investment company.” The suit suggests one more way that SPACs could be considered a hybrid—a cross between an investment company (like a mutual fund) and a publicly traded company.

One wonders how we will look back on these market developments a decade from now. Will SPACs, cryptoassets, and mobile trading apps be seen as hybrids that emerged in the antechamber we are living in now?

The U.S. and Chinese governments should take action to lower future borrowing, as a surge in their debts threatens to have “profound” effects on the global economy and the interest rates paid by other countries, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday.

In its twice-yearly report on government borrowing, the Fund said many rich countries have adopted measures that will lead to a reduction in their debts relative to the size of their economies, although not to the levels seen before the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, that is not true of the U.S. and China, which will continue to see a surge in borrowing if current policies remain in place. The Fund projected that U.S. government debt relative to economic output will rise by 70% by 2053, while Chinese debt will more than double by the same year.

The Fund said both countries will lead a rise in global government debt to 98.8% of economic output in 2029 from 93.2% in 2023. The U.K. and Italy are among the other big contributors to that increase.

“The increase will be led by some large economies, for example, China, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which critically need to take policy action to address fundamental imbalances between spending and revenues,” the IMF said.

The IMF expects U.S. government debt to be 133.9% of annual gross domestic product in 2029, up from 122.1% in 2023. And it expects China’s debt to rise to 110.1% of GDP by the same year from 83.6%.

The Fund said there had been “large fiscal slippages” in the U.S. during 2023, with government spending exceeding revenues by 8.8% of GDP, up from 4.1% in the previous year. It expects the budget deficit to exceed 6% over the medium term.

That level of borrowing is slowing progress toward reducing inflation, the Fund said, and may also increase the interest rates paid by other governments.

“Loose US fiscal policy could make the last mile of disinflation harder to achieve while exacerbating the debt burden,” the Fund said. “Further, global interest rate spillovers could contribute to tighter financial conditions, increasing risks elsewhere.”

A series of weak auctions for U.S. Treasurys are stoking investors’ concerns that markets will struggle to absorb an incoming rush of government debt. The government is poised to sell another $386 billion or so of bonds in May—an onslaught that Wall Street expects to continue no matter who wins November’s presidential election.

While analysts don’t expect those sales to fail, a sharp rise in U.S. bond yields would likely have consequences for borrowers around the world. The IMF estimated that a rise of one percentage point in U.S. yields leads to a matching rise for developing economies and an increase of 90 basis points in other rich countries.

“Long-term government bond yields in the United States remain elevated and sensitive to inflation developments and monetary policy decisions,” the Fund said. “This could lead to volatile financing conditions in other economies.”

China’s budget deficit fell to 7.1% of GDP in 2023 from 7.5% the previous year, but the IMF projects a steady pickup from this year to 7.9% in 2029. It warned that a slowdown in the world’s second largest economy “exacerbated by unintended fiscal tightening” would likely weaken growth elsewhere, and reduce aid flows that have become a significant source of funding for governments in Africa and Latin America.

An unusually large number of elections is likely to push government borrowing higher this year, the Fund said. It estimates that 88 economies or economic areas are set for significant votes, and that budget deficits tend to be 0.3% of GDP higher in election years than in other years.

“What makes this year different is not only the confluence of elections, but the fact that they will happen amid higher demand for public spending,” the Fund said. “The bias toward higher spending is shared across the political spectrum, indicating substantial challenges in gathering support for consolidation in the years ahead, and particularly in a key election year like 2024.”

The Three Big Transitions Reshaping Finance

Three phenomena have exploded since COVID: digital assets, Robinhood, and SPACs.

Says U.S. and China, which will continue to see a surge in borrowing if current policies remain in place.