Warrington in the News Articles: page 28

Seemingly every week there’s another blockbuster transaction in the metaverse, like the Yuga Labs “land” grab from a few weeks ago that saw users spend the equivalent of more than $300 million on virtual real estate, nearly crashing the Ethereum network.

The next step might be a metaverse economy that crosses over into the real world of atoms, not bits, as they say. What if you could do your shopping not from an Amazon list, but in a sort of virtual supermarket, or shopping mall, without leaving your home?

“These marketplaces are new, small, and still evolving,” said Public Utility Research Center Director and Gunter Professor Mark Jamison, an economist and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has studied the metaverse. “You’re involved in trying to project into the future whether it’s going to be a viable product, and a viable place to engage in your transactions.”

Cordell Eminent Scholar Jay Ritter shares his insights on the CFA Institute’s recommendation that SPAC sponsors fully disclose any affiliations with investors and target companies.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said it’s taking a break from handling special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), or blank check, initial public offerings amid a sharp slowdown in the market in recent months.

IPO expert Jay Ritter, Cordell Eminent Scholar at University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business, said Goldman may be blaming regulators for its current exit from the SPAC market, but the big banks have already pulled out anyway.

Cordell Eminent Scholar Jay Ritter shared his insights on the top skills for technology jobs in investment banks.

Read Ritter’s insights on what investment banks look for in the technology professionals they hire.

With Elon Musk’s recent purchase of Twitter, many are worried about what that could mean for speech on the platform. Public Utility Research Center Director and Gunter Professor Mark Jamison says they shouldn’t be worried, unless they are Mark Zuckerberg.

“Who should be afraid of a Musk-led Twitter, however, is Meta — a company that Musk says gives him ‘the willies.’ A Musk-led Twitter ultimately could attract more users and move into the metaverse more seamlessly than Meta — putting the Mark Zuckerberg-led social media giant under greater competitive pressure than ever before.”

What a difference a day makes. On Thursday, Ostin Technology GroupOST –21.26%, a Chinese supplier of display modules, gave back most of the 892% gain from its first day as a publicly traded company.

The IPO market has seen quite a few low-float listings this year among the few firms that have gone public, said Cordell Eminent Scholar Jay Ritter, who studies special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACS, and IPOs. Almost all are money-losing companies with little or no revenue, Ritter said.

Last year, Facebook rebranded itself as Meta, signaling its shift from traditional social media to a big bet on the so-called metaverse. This network of 3D, online spaces is accessed through virtual reality headsets like Meta’s Oculus and promises to revolutionize internet communications. But is there substance behind the hype, or is the metaverse just a fad? And if virtual reality worlds are here to stay, what do policymakers need to know about them? To answer those questions, Political Economy with James Pethokoukis brought Mark Jamison on the podcast.

Jamison is the director of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Over the past several months, Jamison has been writing about the metaverse and the challenges it faces.

Steinway Musical Instruments plans to go public as it continues to mix tradition with innovation. But is this the right time for an IPO?

Cordell Eminent Scholar Jay Ritter weighs in.

With SPACs, “you’ve got the people involved as a sponsor and you can check their criminal record, but it’s not like you have to spend a huge amount of time in due diligence,” explains Cordell Eminent Scholar Jay Ritter.

“Elon Musk created a stir by becoming Twitter’s largest shareholder and then offering to buy the company outright,” writes Public Utility Research Center Director and Gunter Professor Mark Jamison. “He says he wants to create a public platform that is ‘broadly inclusive’ and ‘maximally trusted’ while putting little emphasis on profits. If this is what Musk wants to do, this is the moment.”