Posts tagged BlackRock
Personal Capital is Acquired for $1 Billion, Lemonade IPOs and PayPal Joins the Crypto Club
Personal Capital is Acquired for $1 Billion, Lemonade IPOs and PayPal Joins the Crypto Club

Robo 1.0 success Personal Capital was acquired for nearly $1 billion by Empower, a major retirement savings manager. Softbank-backed insurtech darling Lemonade IPOed at less than $2 billion, in a successful fundraise and listing, and has since seen its market cap rise to over $4 billion. The IPO is a landmark for an insurtech industry in desperate need of successes. And PayPal announces the impending launch of crypto trading to its 325 million users. The move isn’t overly interesting in its own right, but the implications for the crypto space are worth exploring.

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acquisition, digital transformation, digital investing, roboadvisorLex SokolinPersonal Capital, PayPal, Lemonade, BlackRock, Empower Retirement, Binance, Coinbase, MetaMask, Bitcoin
Creativity and courage are the vaccine -- from molecular technology, to digital workspaces, to solving for global health data
Creativity and courage are the vaccine -- from molecular technology, to digital workspaces, to solving for global health data

This week, we look at what positive innovations could arise from the pressure cooker of the pandemic. I touch on health care data and privacy, molecular technology, digital work- and play-spaces, and their financial implications. Channeled productively, the next decade could see advances in these fields that we can't yet imagine.

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philosophy, covid pandemic, identity and privacyLex SokolinBlackRock, Mortgages, NVIDIA, Molecular Assemblies, Folding@home, Zoom, Slack, Huawei, Twitch, TikTok, Decentraland, The Sandbox, CryptoVoxels, Ethereum
Financial Empires fall -- HSBC to fire 35,000; E*TRADE sells to Morgan Stanley for $13B
Financial Empires fall -- HSBC to fire 35,000; E*TRADE sells to Morgan Stanley for $13B

I examine the unbelievable transformation and restructuring happening in high finance. Global bank HSBC is planning to lay off over 10% of staff, looking at reductions of 35,000. E*TRADE is being acquired by Morgan Stanley, integrating its 5,000,000 accounts and $360 billion of assets into the Wall Street investment firm. Legg Mason and its $800 billion of assets are being folded into Franklin Templeton for $4.5 billion, less than what Visa had paid for fintech data aggregator Plaid and half of what Robinhood is likely valued privately. How do we make sense of these developments? How do we appeal to the heart?

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digital transformation, neobank, asset managementLex SokolinHSBC, Franklin Templeton, Legg Mason, Morgan Stanley, eTrade, Marcus, Goldman Sachs, Bankrate, JP Morgan, BlackRock, Fidelity, Citi, Betterment, Wealthfront
Citi launches free roboadvisor, and how roboadvisors are like Twinkies
Citi launches free roboadvisor, and how roboadvisors are like Twinkies

I discuss Citi's roboadvisor launch and why it took the firm 12 years to get to the party. We break down the difference between financial services ingredients and the organizations that combine those ingredients to manufacture and distribute financial products. We also look at how that consumer prerogative is defining the asset management industry, and the consolidation towards monolithic passive indexing providers. Last, we talk about how people prefer mass produced Twinkies to expensive artisanal desserts. Yummy!

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asset management, roboadvisor, digital transformationLex SokolinCiti, Jemstep, AdvisorEngine, BlackRock, FutureAdvisor, Invesco, Netflix