Most diverse IPO pipeline I've seen years, says Nasdaq president Nelson Griggs

Andrew Ross Sorkin (Anchor) 00:00.070

joining us now to discuss the year of IPO 's and his outlook for twenty twenty six is nasdaq president nelson griggs good morning to you congratulations on what was a pretty great twenty twenty five yeah when you think about twenty twenty six people are already speculating about

Andrew Ross Sorkin (Anchor) 00:15.190

names like open AI and anthropic and spacex i mean we could be in a whole new realm so where are we really and is that pie in the sky or is that reality i think

Nelson Griggs (President) 00:26.710

there's a lot of reality there i think that this year we went in probably with higher expectations but dealt with the tariff situation we dealt with the government shutdown and we still had a doubling of last year so there's a bit of a a backlog in the pipeline it's the most

Nelson Griggs (President) 00:41.750

diverse pipeline i've seen in in years across multiple sectors we have a a low vix we have volatility index we have interest rate environment that's more constructive you have the markets doing pretty well and i think there's just a backdrop of good M and A activity putting a

Nelson Griggs (President) 00:58.430

floor on some prices and we've seen in the private market valuations getting a lot closer to where previous rounds were so the setup is very strong obviously things can happen but across a you know large small medium we see a lot of activity coming in twenty six

Andrew Ross Sorkin (Anchor) 01:14.030

those names yeah i don't know if you can speak to those names i don't know how this works i think we've

Nelson Griggs (President) 01:18.310

done this before and you know i cannot speak to those names but no i think there's tremendous excitement about what could be some of the largest IPO 's of all time probably more of a back half consideration but i think you look at companies that are in that one billion ten

Nelson Griggs (President) 01:34.510

billion there's going to be potentially a bit of a a rush to get out in the first half of the year if you do think about some larger names maybe thinking about the back half of the year to make sure they're not going to be you know there's enough enough capital

Andrew Ross Sorkin (Anchor) 01:46.150

policy question yeah which is and i think you you had a session here with the head of the SEC and adina together in terms of you know trying to make IPO 's great again there's still this issue of so many private companies that have stayed private for so much longer and it's true

Andrew Ross Sorkin (Anchor) 02:02.150

that some of the companies were even talking about that you're not mentioning by name but i am have been private for quite quite some time and whether it would have been better to make those companies public earlier so that the investor class the public could actually

Andrew Ross Sorkin (Anchor) 02:17.670

participate and what you think is really happening at this point well we

Nelson Griggs (President) 02:21.310

definitely have a by with the leadership of the administration and chair atkins there's a strong push the strongest i've been here for twenty five years and we've always tried to think about ways that we can make the public markets more attractive to companies and i think the

Nelson Griggs (President) 02:35.590

there's more momentum now than ever looking at some big structural changes scale disclosure the consideration around mandatory arbitration as as an opportunity for companies and then proxy reform so i think i think it's building anders

Andrew Ross Sorkin (Anchor) 02:49.030

like at the same time there's an effort afoot to allow for example like the tokenization of a private company so that public shareholders can effectively access private companies without the same types of disclosure frankly or for example these semi liquid instruments of

Andrew Ross Sorkin (Anchor) 03:06.070

creating effectively what looks like a venture capital fund or private equity fund putting those right here in in the public markets so that people actually

Nelson Griggs (President) 03:14.950

so that those companies actually stay private for longer yeah there's a lot in that question but i i we're believers that we need to have a robust private market and a robust public market and anything that we can do at nasdaq to help make the public markets more attractive we

Nelson Griggs (President) 03:29.390

have we're all in on we have been for years but i think we have an administration and SEC who's willing to really take that leap now and make some things effective but with the private market that is a valuable a very viable asset class and you need to make sure that has the

Nelson Griggs (President) 03:42.710

right guardrails on as well too so i think the blend is a good thing you

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mentioned that maybe some smaller and mid sized companies will want to get their deals out because maybe we got the jumbo ones coming later in aggregate are we going to be worrying about how much capital is going to be demanded of this market at a time when she's talking about

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stock buyback flows maybe going down because everyone 's spending on capex i think

Nelson Griggs (President) 04:02.990

it's a good question i think the markets gonna determine what that looks like there's you know if you look at this year being a good year on nasdaq raising almost forty seven billion that still is not a very large amount right so let's say you get a doubling of that what have

Nelson Griggs (President) 04:14.950

you the piece

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like fifty five trillion or something exactly

Nelson Griggs (President) 04:17.750

so i think there is is plenty of capital you do start looking at some of the what could be the largest ipos of all time that's gonna be something for the you know the the bankers the whole ecosystem to work out