Fortune Staff

Aggregate sales hit $37.8 trillion last year—an increase of 19%, the highest annual growth rate in the list’s history.

Global 500

Key Financials (Last Fiscal Year)

Revenues ($M)

Profits ($M)

Assets ($M)

Total Stockholder Equity ($M)

Profit Ratios

Profit as % of Revenues

Profits as % of Assets

Profits as % of Stockholder Equity

legacy

 Isabelle Freidheim, CEO, Athena SPACs 
Bonnie Hyun, U.S. Head of Capital Markets, NYSE
Lydia Jett, Managing Partner, Softbank Investment Advisers 
Alison Rapaport Stillman, Founding General Partner, Serena Ventures 
Moderator: Jessica Mathews, FORTUNE


Brainstorm Tech 2022: Investing In Today’s Turbulent Market 

Conferences

Isabelle Freidheim, Athena SPACs 
Bonnie Hyun, NYSE
Lydia Jett, Softbank Investment Advisers 
Alison Rapaport Stillman, Serena Ventures 

He testified before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.


SEC Chair Gensler on the risks of SPACs

Finance

SEC Chair Gensler on the risks of SPACs


what are the risks fare against her? What are the risks that the SPAC market has highlighted over the last year? And what can we do about it? I think the special purpose acquisition companies, these blank check cos the risk or to investors and the disclosure to the investors. I've asked the staff to serve up recommendations that we could consider as a commission. But in essence, there's a lot of costs in these. And secondly, they usually have a two year fuse and in that two year fuse they try to go out and buy something and a lot of the institutional investors, when that happens sell, it's called a redemption right? And retail investors are often left holding the dilution or the significant cost of the bankers and the promoters. So we're looking at greater disclosures and also looking at if there's inherent conflicts along the way. And then again, try to put this out to notice and comment and rulemaking.

And why more companies are using them to go public.

What is a SPAC

We've been talking about SPAC so often this year because there have been so many of them special purpose acquisition companies. Blank check companies are all the rage. Billy Bean's got one. Even former House Speaker Paul Ryan has got one genomic times I've been approached to do us back. Of course, I know you may have read or heard about specs serving as a trendy alternative to the I P O. Let's dive into what it is and how it works. SPAC stands for Special Purpose Acquisition Company Let's look at company a company A is looking to go public. The I P O process typically requires a lot of paperwork, money, marketing regulations and so on. Company A decides to ditch the traditional I p o process and go public by finding a SPAC partner. The SPAC is essentially a shell corporation with no actual business operations or significant assets. The people behind this pack will try to convince public investors to invest dispatch itself. A publicly traded company will use these investor funds to acquire Company A. If all is approved, then company will merge with this pack and take its place on the public market. Shares are commonly sold at $10 apiece, along with a warrant that allows investors to buy stock at a fixed price because investors don't always know how their capital will be used. Stacks are often referred to as blank check company the facts of yesteryear or nothing like what the facts are there listening today when the New York Stock Exchange did not use the list, facts patiently started listing them in 2017 with a change in our rule structure, and we're already seeing them continue to evolve as they become more modern Products offering over $80 billion was raised through stacks in 2020 248 facts were listed in 2020 which is more than double 2019 total and five times the 2015 total. The biggest back on record. Pershing Square Tintin Holdings, which raised $4 billion in July 2020 that was led by hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. Bill Ackman notoriously had a very large fact that launched, and he changed the mechanisms and the structures of the fact. Let's look at Sfax. I get it. The roadshow is arduous, it's annoying. You can't do it in covid times. This is a really efficient way to match an investor with the company. But that's the thing. It's an investor. It's one investor deciding this is the right price for this company. Um, there is no vetting process. The vetting process happens when it's too late, when it's already a public company. And what we've seen with Nicola and other situations multiple, um yesterday is that oftentimes a lot of these companies would have benefited from having more vetting on a traditional road show. They would never have gotten evaluations they got, and people wouldn't have lost billions of dollars when it turned out that they weren't vetted enough. Brown raises an important point about the downside of stacks. The people who oversee them get paid when they acquire a company. That means they may have a perverse incentive to acquire any company regardless of its value, and that can leave ordinary investors in the lurch. History shows specs have drastically underperformed regular IPOs since 2015, but this could change as Ackman and other respected investors embrace the model. As for the future of how companies decide to go public, the process will continue to become more customizable. Mhm. I think across back direct listings and I P. O s. We're going to start to see people get more creative with what elements of each one of those they want to leverage. And as they come to the public market, like lockups and and the, um, disclosures and and structures around compensation with the fact Wow, that's fascinating.

Apple announced three new M1 Macs and more.


Apple M1 event in 5 minutes

Tech

Apple announced three new M1 Macs and more.

M one M one has been optimized for our most popular low power systems, where small size and power efficiency are critically important. It is a stunningly capable chip, and it ushers in a whole new era. For the Mac. M one is the first system on Chip. Or as we'll see for the Mac, let me show you what that means. Until now, a Mac needed multiple chips to deliver all of its features. It had ships for the processor, oil security and memory. Now with them one, these technologies are combined into a single associate, delivering a whole new level of integration for most simplicity, efficiency and amazing performance. M one also features our unified memory architecture or, um A and one unifies its high bandwidth, low latency memory into a single pool within a custom package. As a result, all of the technologies and they're so she can access the same data without copying it between multiple pools of memory, this dramatically improved performance and power efficiency. The incredible performance of M one starts with the CPU, which features two types, of course, high performance on high efficiency. Each performance core is designed to find a single task or threat as efficiently as possible while maximizing performance. We've been advancing it year after year and now with the huge improvements and and one when it comes to low power silicon, our high performance score is the world's fastest CPU core. Anyone can deliver the peak performance of the piece of shit while using just one third of the power. When it comes to personal computers, anyone has the world's fastest integrated graphics. Big Sur introduces a bold new design, powerful updates for apps like safari in messages and the latest improvements to our industry leading privacy features. And by designing the whole system together, hardware and software were able to make the things you love about your Mac. Even better now, Mac Os Big Sur has incredible technologies that enable you to run a greater range of apps than ever before. First, our universal apps, for example, Omni Group is bringing universal versions of all of their great Mac apps, and Adobe is bringing universal versions of their apps starting with light room next month, and other flagship apps, including Photoshop early next year for existing apps that haven't yet upgraded to universal Big Sur includes an amazing new technology. Rosetta to on M one systems Rosetta seamlessly runs apps built for Intel based Macs. So even without an APP update, you can keep working on that Fusion 3 60 project and get to the next level and your favorite game. This is the new MacBook Air with M one. The new Air delivers all this performance without a fan. So no matter how intense the task, MacBook Air is completely silent. And that same incredible efficiency also delivers extraordinary battery life. With up to 15 hours of wireless Web browsing and up to an amazing 18 hours of video playback that's six hours longer than before. Apple's latest image signal processor comes to the Mac. This I S P delivers better noise reduction and greater dynamic range for sharper images and more detail in shadows and highlights, as well as improved auto white balance combined with ML enhanced face detection. So you look more natural on your face time calls. The air still starts at just 9 99 and for education, it starts with just 8 99 delivering way more value than ever before. This is the new Mac Mini. The tremendous level of integration offered by the system on a chip design of M one allows us to pack a remarkable amount of performance and capability into its compact design. If you compare Mac Mini to the top selling PC desktop in its price range, the mini is just 1/10 the size, and yet it's up to five times faster. It also makes Mac Mini a great machine for developers, scientists and engineers, utilizing deep learning technologies like tensorflow or create ML, which are now accelerated by M one. There's an array of I O, including two USB C ports that now support both Thunderball and us before Mac Mini now starts at just 6 99. That's $100 lower than the previous generation. Here's the new 13 inch MacBook pro with them. One. Our most popular and affordable macro pro dramatically changes your expectations of what a compact pro notebook can do. The new MacBook Pro also features an active cooling system. This allows it to sustain its remarkable pro performance when ripping through intensive tasks like video Transcoder in compressor. The new MacBook Pro delivers up to an incredible 17 hours for wireless Web browsing and up to 20 hours for video playback. That's 10 more hours than before, and that's the longest battery life ever in a Mac. The new Pro is still just 12 99 and just 11 99 for education.

ACS

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