Stock Bulls Get Wake-Up Call From Wall Street CEOs

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: Bloomberg Businessweek
Episode: Stock Bulls Get Wake-Up Call From Wall Street CEOs
Date: November 4, 2025
Hosts: Emily Griffeo, Barry Ritholtz, Isabel Lee, et al.

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Overview

This episode of Bloomberg Businessweek looks at the increasingly cautious climate on Wall Street amidst high stock valuations and recent CEO warnings. It covers three major themes:

1. The realism (or lack thereof) behind Wall Street CEO warnings about a potential pullback.
2. The impact and business outlook related to the New York City mayoral election, particularly concerns from the business community about affordability and policy shifts.
3. Major trends in the commercial real estate and flexible workspace markets, and the explosive, innovative growth in the ETF industry.

Throughout, the hosts and their expert guests inject skepticism, data-driven analysis, and candid industry perspectives.

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1. Wall Street CEOs & The Stock Market's Pullback Warning

Key Discussion Points

• Wall Street Caution: CEOs and industry leaders are signaling a possible market pullback, cautioning that valuations are stretched.
  • However, some experts believe that these warnings are mostly generic and lack urgency.
• The ‘Easy Call’ of a 5–10% Drop:
  • “They’re saying yeah, within the next two years you could see a 5 to 10% drop. Really? I think we all expect that.” — Emily Griffeo (02:22)
• Bubble or Not?
  • The narrative of an impending bubble in stocks, especially in AI-driven firms, keeps getting pushed into the future. Market performance continually outpaces negative predictions.

Notable Quotes

• “The idea that people are still keeping an eye out for these things and there are phrases or trends that could take these stocks down tells you ... it’s maybe not a full blown bubble, at least just yet.” — Gillian Wolfe, Bloomberg Intelligence (05:13)
• “Investors aren’t showing signs of mania or panic right now ... we aren’t seeing that in any of the underlying indicators that typically signal over billions.” — Gillian Wolfe (06:14)

Market Metrics & Sentiment

• The “Market Pulse Sentiment Index” tracks signs of excess risk-taking. Currently, no significant warning signals have been raised (06:14).
• The market is highly concentrated in seven major tech stocks (the 'Mag 7'), which are dictating index moves. On some days, all other stocks can rise but the index still drops if the Mag 7 are down (07:16).

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2. New York City Mayoral Election & Economic Implications

Setting the Stage

• Upcoming mayoral election: energetic, high-turnout, and featuring the dramatic rise of 34-year-old Democratic nominee Zoran Mamdani.
• Business community, investors, and residents are concerned about potential tax hikes, affordability, and future policy direction.

Key Insights

• Perception vs. Reality on Mayoral Power:
  • “Under our constitution, the mayor has no power to raise income or corporate taxes. That belongs to the governor and the state legislature.” — Kathy Wilde (14:32)
  • Existing checks and balances (e.g., a fiscal control board) prevent radical financial moves.
• Housing, Affordability, and Business Needs:
  • All sides agree that New York faces an affordability crisis fueled by soaring housing, childcare, and living costs.
  • “You don’t get a more affordable city by raising taxes. So I think that’s something that our next mayor is going to find out pretty quickly.” — Kathy Wilde (16:41)
• Business Community Engagement:
  • Mamdani has proactively reached out to business leaders after securing the nomination, seeking common ground on affordability and city services (20:09).
• Importance of Competent Management:
  • Relief in the business community as Mamdani agrees to retain the respected police commissioner and focus on results-driven leadership.
  • Comparison to Michael Bloomberg as a strong marketer of New York City’s image (21:41).

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “What people care about is we have a safe city ... the agencies are all run well, that the sanitation picks up the garbage, that education produces smart kids. That’s what city government does.” — Kathy Wilde (21:55)
• “Honestly, I think Mamdani could be a very good marketer of the city ... Mike Bloomberg did for our city.” — Kathy Wilde (22:26)
• “As government has less money ... there’s much more motivation to bring in the private sector and build public-private partnerships.” — Kathy Wilde (22:51)

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3. Flexible Workspaces & Commercial Real Estate Trends

Guest: Mark Dixon, CEO of International Workplace Group (IWG)

Key Themes & Takeaways

• Record Revenue Growth:
  • “We’ve seen the best revenue growth that we’ve seen in a number of years in this quarter. ... Strong outlook for 2026.” — Mark Dixon (25:08)
• The Office Isn't Dead, It’s Evolved:
  • Companies are moving away from centralized, massive offices to distributed, high-quality, flexible workspaces.
  • “The office hasn’t gone away, it’s just moved. ... Workers are using more convenient locations.” — Mark Dixon (26:00)
• Geographic Trends:
  • The U.S. is leading in flexible workspace adoption, but the trend is global—from Japan and Europe to rapid growth in Africa and the Middle East (28:19, 32:14)
• NYC Real Estate Market:
  • “In New York City ... companies are having less space downtown, but they want better space. There’s a move to quality ... But there are problems with B and C grade properties.” — Mark Dixon (30:10)
• Flexible Services for Remote Work:
  • IWG also supports home-based workers with services, furniture, drop-in office access, etc.

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4. ETF Industry Boom & Innovation

Guests: Isabel Lee (Bloomberg News), Emily Griffeo, Barry Ritholtz

Main Discussion Points

• ETF Proliferation:
  • 60 new entrants this year alone. The threshold for launching an ETF has never been lower—a few hundred thousand dollars, a good idea, and a network suffices (36:28, 39:50).
• More Active & Niche ETFs:
  • Explosion of “jaw-dropping” concepts: 3x and 5x leveraged funds, exotic option strategies, and actively managed ETFs (38:09).
• Market Segmentation:
  • “Fee compression is a story of yesterday ... to stand out ... is to have a crazy idea.” — Isabel Lee (38:09)
  • Many ETFs close soon after launching (1 closure for every 5 launches), reflecting a competitive, dynamic marketplace (39:50).
• Marketing Power:
  • ETFs tied to high-profile strategists (e.g., Tom Lee, Dan Ives) attract massive inflows due to expertise and performance (41:20).
  • “... their performance is also great. Year to date, both ETFs are up 31% ... and 20% ... So sometimes you see Cathie Wood ... but both these guys have it.” — Isabel Lee (42:01)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|----------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:22 | Emily Griffeo | “They’re saying yeah, within the next two years you could see a 5 to 10% drop. Really? I think we all expect that.” | | 05:13 | Gillian Wolfe | “The idea that people are still keeping an eye out for these things ... tells you ... it’s maybe not a full blown bubble.” | | 14:32 | Kathy Wilde | “Under our constitution, the mayor has no power to raise income or corporate taxes. That belongs to the governor and legislature.”| | 16:41 | Kathy Wilde | “You don’t get a more affordable city by raising taxes. So I think that’s something ... next mayor is going to find out.” | | 26:00 | Mark Dixon | “The office hasn’t gone away, it’s just moved. ... Workers are using more convenient locations.” | | 28:19 | Mark Dixon | “It’s similar. The US is a sort of trend leader ... but the same is happening across the world ...” | | 38:09 | Isabel Lee | “Fee compression is a story of yesterday ... to stand out ... is to have a crazy idea.” | | 41:20 | Isabel Lee | “1 billion [AUM] is a stunning success. Tom Lee and Dan Ives achieved those ... in less than a year.” | | 42:01 | Isabel Lee | “... their performance is also great. Year to date, both ETFs are up 31% ... and 20% ...” |

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Timestamps – Key Segments

• Stock Market & Wall Street CEO Caution
  01:45 – 08:28

• NYC Mayoral Election & Business Community Impact
  10:14 – 24:12

• Global Flexible Workspaces & Real Estate Trends
  24:27 – 32:52

• ETF Industry Trends & Innovation
  34:34 – 42:20

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Summary

This episode offers a brisk yet insightful tour of the day’s financial anxieties and innovations:

• Wall Street CEOs are warning of a possible pullback, but the tone feels more like “routine caution” than red alert, with little evidence of euphoria.
• New York’s mayoral race is framed more as a referendum on affordability than ideological upheaval, and business leaders seem reassured by strong institutional guardrails and signals of professional management.
• Commercial real estate and the workspace sector show dynamic adaptation to new working models, with quality over quantity leading the way in cities.
• The ETF explosion continues—with entrants both amateur and elite finding new ways to slice, dice, and market investment strategies to a restless, clickable audience.

Overall mood: Skeptical, pragmatic, and alert to the divergent realities under the headlines.

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Transcript

[Narrator/Host]

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[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

Matt Miller here with us today. Bloomberg Businessweek stocks dropping on this election day the S&P 500 down almost 1%. Tech stocks getting crushed even further, Matt and really the only place to hide out is the dollar and Treasuries today. There's also a chorus of Wall street executives warning investors to brace for a pullback amid lofty valuations. Gillian Wolfe is here. Are you? You're doubtful.

[Emily Griffeo]

I mean, you know what the first thing I saw this morning when I logged on to the Bloomberg terminal at like 4:30 in the morning, I saw this story that Wall street bigwigs are warning about a pullback.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

That's what's happening.

[Emily Griffeo]

I read the story and it wasn't really that much of a warning. I mean they're saying yeah, within the next two years you could see a 5 to 10% drop. Really? I think we all expect that case.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

That that is very true. Let's get Gillian Wolf's take on this. She's global equity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, here with us in the Bloomberg Businessweek studio. Let's just start right there because that is the headline today that Wall street execs are warning. But Matt is right. Some of these warnings were like stocks could drop 10% in in a year.

[Emily Griffeo]

Right. Easiest call to make, right.

[Gillian Wolfe]

What was it that 60 Minutes interview that happened recently or so he said? Oh, eventually there will be a downturn. Eventually there will be a downturn. I think we've been hearing, I almost feel like for the past 18 months about is a bubble, is there going to be a downturn, our stocks getting too hot and we just haven't seen it occur yet. But I think I want to point out two important things which is one, that at the start of this year investors or the consensus really thought that AI earnings growth was going to slow and the rest of the index was in a catch up. I just gotten too hot, the comps were too difficult. This had to be a bubble. The rest of the market had to catch up. That was the call starting 2025. Now that's been pushed out to 2026. Again, stocks have actually done much better on earnings than investors thought and the rest of the market has been lagging on earnings growth. So this convergence thesis still gets pushed out further and further. So the question of whether or not is a bubble. We had that call at the start of the year and it didn't play out. And the idea of this just can't get much hotter. The second thing I do think that investors are starting to look at right now though is capital discipline. Right. And I think the Metta call last week told us a lot because met a beat but they tanked on more capex spending than maybe investors the consensus would have liked to see. I think we're now maybe entering a phase where it's not so much about whether or not these stocks can deliver but are they maintaining enough discipline? Are they getting over their skis? Right. Are they are they building out too fast? Faster than necessarily companies could adopt the technology. Whether or not eventually companies will adopt the technology is still to still to be seen. But I think there's this concern starting to grow. Our we going too fast with this level of investment.

[Emily Griffeo]

I mean the one thing I would say about Metta is that of the big hyperscalers, it doesn't have a clear line to show you what kind of ROI they're getting on their investment. Right. And Mark Zuckerberg seems the most excited of all the major CEOs to overspend if possible. Right. He actually said, could we overspend by a couple of hundred billion dollars? Yes, but it's better than the alternative, which is not spending enough. And that's not the kind of sort of free feeling, loose purse strings talk you hear from the Microsoft CEO for.

[Gillian Wolfe]

But if anything, that tells you maybe that this isn't this overly exuberant bubble. Right. The idea that you can spend too much. Let's not get too overzealous about the trade. Investors are still a bit wary about it. Right. A bubble implies that you're investing in companies like in 2000 that don't even have an earnings stream yet, hoping that they eventually will. Now you're definitely seeing some caution and maybe some lessons learned from that era. These stocks aren't invincible. And usually people don't talk about a bubble when we're in a bubble. Right. So the idea that people are still keeping an eye out for these things and there are phrases or trends that could take these stocks down tells you a little bit that it's maybe not a full blown bubble, at least just yet.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

Your recent research has looked at some metrics that you track at Bloomberg Intelligence about showing that investors still are relatively calm. Right. There's some pieces of data that you're looking at that are showing that there's not that much panic when you look at, I think it's breath.

[Kathy Wilde]

Right.

[Gillian Wolfe]

Yeah. So when we look at, we run our Market Pulse Sentiment index, which takes a look at whether or not investors are getting too manic or panicky. So typically when they get too manic, that's a sign that the rallies run too hot. Likely it's, it historically has told us that it's likely to slow down going forward. We aren't seeing that right now. We aren't seeing that in any of the underlying indicators that typically signal over billions. We're, we are seeing low volatility stocks do rather poorly compared to high volatility counterparts. That's sort of a sign that we're in this risk on environment. But when you look at breadth, when you look at, you know, how well highly levered versus low levered stocks are performing, we aren't seeing this mania. That usually leads to a drawback because you've just piled too much into maybe more garbage stocks without, without keeping an eye on what's actually happening underneath.

[Emily Griffeo]

What are we seeing in terms though of companies hitting weekly highs? Companies hitting, sorry, 52 week highs. Yeah, 52 week lows. What's the Hindenburg omen?

[Gillian Wolfe]

Well, what we know is that the largest stocks, the MAG7, we did analysis on this recently, are really what ultimately determines the direction of the index. This has really been more and more true over the past 12 months that the Mag 7 are up. On any given day, the index will be up at the max seven or down. The index will be down. I think there was a day last week where the Mag 7, it was the day matter reported the Max 7 were down on median. So the index was down, but every other stock was actually up on median if you looked at the rest. So I think looking at breadth metrics to kind of tell you where the index might be going, we're not really in that regime right now. We're in this very highly concentrated regime where just because of the nature of the index weighting, there's only a handful of stocks that are really going to dictate its overall direction. That said, the bottom isn't falling out from underneath the market or anything like that. You don't just have these mad 7 stocks doing incredibly well and everything else doing poorly. Like I said, we just had a day recently where mag7 did poorly, everything else did well. Market was still down. So we look at it to kind of see, we look at breadth to see, well, is the, is the bottom falling out from under the market? Is the market doing well? Just because the Mag 7 is doing well? But that's definitely not what we're seeing right now.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

All right, Julian Wolf, Global Equity Strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, thank you for joining us.

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[Barry Ritholtz]

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[Narrator/Host]

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[Emily Griffeo]

Now on the latest installment of our weekly discussion focused on women, money and power, we explore all the economic implications of today's New York City mayoral election with one of the most influential women in the history of Big Apple politics.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

And that's Kathy Wilde. She joins to discuss her view on the New York City mayoral election and how the city's next mayor will impact the local and regional economy and its related businesses. She's also set to step down at the end of the year from her role as President and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, a business lobbying group with 350 CEOs in its ranks.

[Emily Griffeo]

And I should say that our owner and founder, Michael R. Bloomberg and former New York City mayor, of course, gave one and a half million dollars to a super PAC supporting Andrew M. Cuomo's bid for mayor and reiterated his support for the former New York Governor a week before this election. So we do want to make that disclaimer. Now having said all of that, Kathy, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for joining us.

[Kathy Wilde]

Thank you.

[Emily Griffeo]

What's your overview of this of this race? Because it has been incredibly energetic and incredibly well followed.

[Kathy Wilde]

Well, I think number one, it's exciting that we have record turnouts at the polls for a local election and we have literally hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters coming to the polls, a lot of them young people. And as our country has become increasingly cynical about politicians and their motives, it's great to see the level of excitement that this election has generated and particularly the candidacy of a very Young New Yorker, 34 year old Zoran Madani, who is the is the Democratic nominee for mayor of the city.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

The headline on the top of the Bloomberg Terminal today New York City to decide if a Socialist will Run the Capital of Capitalism. In your view, what does Wall street, what is the business community, the capitalist community of New York City want out of this election?

[Kathy Wilde]

Well, I think what we want is political stability. And I don't think that the voters going to the polls are voting for Mamdani because he's a socialist or because they think he's going to transform our capitalist system. That is not within the power of any mayor. And so we're not looking for a major economic change in the city. I think what Mamdani's message has been about, which the business community agrees with, is that we are. New York is the highest cost city in America. Government spending at the state and city level has gone up more than 50% over the past decade, and we can't afford to keep that going. So everybody is looking for a more affordable city. Now, we've got opposite ideas in many cases about how to get there. The business community's position is raising taxes makes New York more expensive. Mom. Donnie's position started out being, I'm going to raise taxes to pay for cheaper housing and health and child care and cheaper groceries. I think that we've made some progress in the last six months in getting him to take a slightly more nuanced position where he has said, I have my goals of a more affordable city, but I welcome the business community's advice on how to get there. So I don't think that this is a crisis situation, regardless of the outcome of the mayoral election. And I do think it's great that more people are engaging in local politics.

[Emily Griffeo]

I do hear the concern that he'll raise taxes voiced from the traders and fund managers and analysts with whom I speak every day on the Bloomberg terminal. They're not the super rich, you know, billionaire class. They're mostly just scraping by it as a very expensive city, you know, to raise children in. Do you think even if he wanted to raise taxes substantially, he has the power to do so as mayor?

[Kathy Wilde]

The. Under our constitution, the mayor has no power to raise income or corporate taxes. That belongs to the governor and the state legislature. So, no, I do not think that there is a reason to be that concerned, because that's going to be a conversation. The governor has said she does not support tax increases at this time. And so what we're looking at is a situation where even if the mayor and the city council were to try to raise expenditures beyond what is prudent at that point, we have a fiscal control board that comes into play that was set up after the financial crisis, the fiscal crisis the city faced in the 1970s. We have a financial control board that the governor, the state controller run, that gets put in place automatically if the city's budget goes out of whack. So we are, we have many protections to make sure that New York remains fiscally sound. There is a debt limit. A mayor cannot borrow more than a prudent amount without hitting that debt ceiling. So there are lots of checks and balances in city government. The mayor does have a great deal of power over real estate decisions, land use zoning decisions, and was very glad to see that. This morning, Mamdani joined with Andrew Cuomo, another candidate, the former governor. He joined with him in supporting three propositions on the ballot that would change the city charter to help us develop more affordable housing more quickly and more cheaply. So, so I think that his housing agenda is very consistent with what the private sector wants to see. So in that area where he has real power, real estate and land use, I think we're in sync.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

And yet you still see these headlines about, you know, New York's wealthy wanting to leave, home prices in Connecticut going up because they want to leave New York. Do you think those fears are overblown then?

[Kathy Wilde]

I think that people. Well, there is a danger of people leaving New York because they can't afford the quality of life they want in the city. Very expensive to buy a home. To buy a home in Manhattan is now over a million dollars. In Brooklyn and queens, it's over $700,000. Most of the population, like 95% cannot afford that. So we have an affordability crisis. Child care is costing 26,000 to 40,000 per year per, per child. What you have to earn. A household has to earn several hundred thousand dollars to be able to afford the high rents, over 3,500 bucks a month. Now, in terms of asking rents, you have to learn a lot, earn a lot of money right now to live in New York. That's what this campaign has been about. And people are really voting for a more affordable city. Now, you don't get a more affordable city by raising taxes. So I think that's something that our next mayor is going to find out pretty quickly.

[Emily Griffeo]

We are talking just as a reminder to Kathy Wild from the Partnership for New York City for decades, one of the city's most influential civic voices. And Kathy, I'm getting a message right now from a listener who's voicing kind of the same kind of surprise that I was talking about with you during the commercial break. It is wild that New York or that the Democratic Party couldn't come up with anyone to challenge Zoran Mand, other than a governor who was chased out of Albany by his own party and a mayor who's basically been chased out of office by his own party, why couldn't the Democrats come up with anyone, you know, qualified to challenge this 34 year old newcomer?

[Kathy Wilde]

Well, when he started out last September, in his campaigns, Armadani had less than 1% of the vote and was considered a totally unlikely candidate to rise to the occasion. He only became a viable candidate when Governor Cuomo got into the race. And basically the seven other Democrats in the race, starting with the current mayor, Eric Adams, were not seen by the voting public in the primary. The other candidates were not. And the mayor dropped out of the primary. He had probably the best chance of reelection in many cases, but he dropped out. And that left us with a good range of Democratic candidates. The city comptroller, the speaker of the city Council, a state senator, the former controller. We had a good field of candidates. But the clear alternative during the course of the election, the clear alternative to Mayor Adams and former Governor Cuomo became Zoran Mandani. And he kind of emerged out of the anti vote for the other candidates.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

You've arranged conversations between Mamdani and the business community. You know, we talked a lot at the beginning of this interview about the affordability crisis resonating with a lot of New Yorkers. You don't have to name names, but I'm wondering if in those conversations anyone was successfully convinced that maybe they were a skeptic of Mamdani. And they came out of the conversations changing their mind.

[Kathy Wilde]

I think they came out of the conversations and the meetings that we had and I, we had a number of them. And to his credit, right after the primary, Zorn called me up and said, I would like to, you know, give me the names and numbers of the business leaders that I should speak to who are concerned about my candidacy.

[Isabel Lee]

So.

[Kathy Wilde]

I can reassure them. My agenda is not to socialize business. My, my agenda is to make this a more affordable city of city of opportunity, which honestly is a goal that we all share. So. So my experience in seeing this is that people recognize he's a very smart, very young man. The worry is, would you hire this person to run a 300,000 person corporation? The answer to that is probably no. But if you're looking for a mayor who is willing to bring in strong professionals, and I think everybody felt better when he said he would retain our current police commissioner, who has a terrific track record and is very well regarded. Jessica Tisch is our current commissioner. He said that Three weeks ago, he would ask her to stay. That made a big impact because the question is, will he bring in strong professionals to run the city agencies? What people care about is we have a safe city, that the agencies are all run well, that the sanitation department picks up the garbage, that the education system produces smart kids, all those. That's what city government does. And that all depends on who are the commissioners, who are the mayor's deputies. And honestly, I think Mamdani could be a very good marketer of the city. He's a compelling communicator. And honestly, that's a lot of what Mike Bloomberg did for our city. He marketed New York and brought us really out of the crisis of 9, 11 and made new York a technology capital of the world. He made enormous contribution as on restoring people's confidence, the people here and the people around the world restoring their confidence in New York. And Mamdani has some of those salesman qualities that I think might be very effective.

[Emily Griffeo]

Kathy, can I ask about your confidence in New York as you prepare to pass the baton in terms of the leadership of Partnership for New York City? What's your view on public private collaboration as you've spent years in this job and what's your hope for this city?

[Kathy Wilde]

Well, ironically, as government has less money, which is what we anticipate with cutbacks in federal funds and the demands for the needs in the city for more government spending, as government has less money, there's much more motivation to bring in the private sector and build public private partnerships. That's what happened after the fiscal Crisis in the 70s. That's when our organization and many others in the 60s city were created where the private sector really took over leading investment in a lot of areas. And I think that we may go through the same cycle as we look forward in terms of the fiscal situation of the city and state being tough as the federal government cuts back. And I think that will be. That is the basis for building new public private partnerships. When government has all the money in the world, they certainly want to spend it, but when they're broke, they're going to look to the private sector. And the smart thing to do is look for investment and ways to cut costs and to make it more, more efficient to operate here. And that's an alternative to raising taxes. And I'm hoping we're going to be able to make that case to the next mayor.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

Cathy Wilde, thank you so much. That's Cathy Wilde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City. We thank you for your time.

[Announcer/Advertiser]

You're listening to the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5pm Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

All right. Mark Dixon, founder and CEO of International Workplace Group, is joining us on Zoom from Monaco to talk about the company's latest earnings and the global commercial real estate market more broadly. IWG is a provider a flexible workplace solutions think hybrid working co working spaces. They have 4,000 locations across more than 120 countries. Mark founded his company which was first called regas in 1989 and then they renamed International Workplace Group just a few years ago. Let's talk about IWG's latest results. Mark, thank you for joining us. What do the results tell us about the current state of flexible workspaces?

[Mark Dixon]

Well, it's look at the results today really reflect growing momentum in the marketplace. More and more companies looking to become more capital light, become more agile, more flexible. So high levels of growth. We've seen the best revenue growth that we've seen in a number of years in this quarter. So good momentum ending the year and very strong outlook for 2026.

[Barry Ritholtz]

Mark, this is Barry Ritholtz. I'm curious as to what you're seeing in terms of return to office. The decreasing need for broad and widespread leases and how, how are you guys taking advantage of that demand for flexible workplace.

[Mark Dixon]

Well, look, this sort of the idea of return to office is an old story. It's companies are still using offices in, in a big way. It's a key component of supporting workers, maximizing productivity. The only thing that's changed is those offices that people are using, workers are using, are in more convenient locations so that you know, they're not all in downtown locations. They're distributed. More and more companies are seeking to support their workforce on a platform of work in many places rather than in one place. But look, the office hasn't gone away, it's just moved. We are supporting 9 million customers today. A million of those actually work from home. 8 million are working from offices. It's a growth market. The way people are consuming companies are consuming real estate is changing fundamentally.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

How are you supporting a company that works from home? How does that relationship work?

[Mark Dixon]

It's we supply a whole range of services for an individual that works from home. It services furniture. The ability, most importantly the ability to drop into an office whenever they need one and to get, you know, based all the services you would get in if you were in an office. You get them supplied from either home or an office you drop into. It's a growing part of our business. More and more workers are working from home. In particular those people that are working in sort of back office functions. You know, the whole commute really makes no sense for many people. And you know that that market continues to grow.

[Barry Ritholtz]

So Mark, you put the international in iwg. Are you seeing any different types of trends in various countries? Is it the same in the US as it might be in the UK or Italy or France?

[Mark Dixon]

It's similar. The US is a sort of trained leader in this space. I mean, US Companies are much quicker to sort of latch onto a trend that helps them spend less money or make more money. They're very focused on workforce productivity. I think more so as we end 25 than any time in the past. They're all focused also on capital light. So US Companies are adopting more quickly and that's large US Corporations, mediums, the smaller companies have always done this. The same is happening across the world, whether that's Japan, whether that's continental Europe, you know, huge growth in for us in places like it countries like Italy or France. So it's not limited to any one country. I mean, I think that the catalyst for all of this is advances in technology. It's the technology that is available today that makes a different way of working possible. So companies are moving to this more distributed working method because it helps productivity, because it lowers cost, and because it's what workers want.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

I have to ask about New York City specifically because our city's kind of on everyone's mind today with the elections. What is your view of just the, the office real estate market specifically in New York City? It's kind of hard to get a read on it because there are of course more people working from home. But then of course, you see JP Morgan building a massive new skyscraper in the middle of midtown Manhattan. What is your take on just the outlook for New York City office real estate?

[Mark Dixon]

Look, it's highly nuanced. And this, these, you know, if you look at work Overall, there's about 1.2 billion white collar workers in the world today. 1.2 billion. It is highly nuanced. Now what works for JP Morgan in, you know, in midtown New York City is not the same for all companies. So this what we're seeing. I mean, we have a very successful business that's growing in New York City. It's a real sort of hotbed of growth for us. But people are working differently. So where companies may have had a thousand people in midtown or downtown, they may have 100 people now and those hundred people tend to be housed in better quality space. So what's happening in New York City and many cities worldwide is that companies are having less space in the sort of central business districts, but they want better space because it has to be a place that people want to come into. So there's a move to quality. The market's vibrant. I mean, New York is better I think now than at any time. I've seen it since 2019 and it's picking up pace all the time. And, and, but, but still the markets change. I mean it's fundamentally different in that there are problems with B and C grade properties where, where you used to house a lot of, of let's call it more back office functions or the cheaper activities. Those have moved.

[Barry Ritholtz]

Mark, in the last 30 seconds we have, you guys are in over 100 countries. What areas do you see growth that might be a little bit surprising to listeners?

[Mark Dixon]

Well, look, we like is Africa. It's you know, huge population in Africa and growing population. So you know, countries like Egypt, I mean Egypt is the Middle east and Africa significant growth. Middle east overall is, is a vibrant market. There is, you know, a lot of companies moving there, a lot of companies growing there. So, you know, the market is moving. It's sort of, yes, it's, Asia is still a sort of powerhouse of growth and manufacturing.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

Right.

[Mark Dixon]

But Middle east and Africa are.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

Mark Dixon, we have to cut you off founder and CEO of iwg. Thanks for joining us.

[Narrator/Host]

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg businessweek Daily coming up after this.

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Hello and welcome. This is the Michelle Hussain Show. Hello, I'm Michelle Hussain. I speak with people like Elon Musk.

[Gillian Wolfe]

I think I've done enough.

[Narrator/Host]

And Shonda Rhimes.

[Kathy Wilde]

That's so cute.

[Narrator/Host]

This will be a place where every weekend you can count on one essential conversation to help make sense of the world. So please join me, listen and subscribe to the Michael Hussain show from Bloomberg Weekend. Wherever you get your podcasts, you certainly ask interesting questions.

[Gillian Wolfe]

Daddy, can I drive?

[Kathy Wilde]

Yeah, sure, why not?

[Narrator/Host]

Do I Look like I drive a minivan.

[Gillian Wolfe]

Shut up and drive.

[Kathy Wilde]

Don't drive angry.

[Announcer/Advertiser]

Don't drive angry. I'll drive y'.

[Kathy Wilde]

All.

[Narrator/Host]

This is the drive to the close.

[Gillian Wolfe]

If you had access to a car like this, would you take it back right away?

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

On Bloomberg Radio, this is Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Emily Griffeo, cross asset reporter at Bloomberg News, here with Barry Ritholtz.

[Barry Ritholtz]

How are you doing, Emily?

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

I don't know. What, what do I call you? Host of the Masters in Business podcast.

[Barry Ritholtz]

Sure.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

Market Co founder.

[Barry Ritholtz]

Co founder of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Just general pain in the butt. That's. I'm here to, to point out all the things that we do wrong with money all the time and remind people please make fewer errors when it comes to managing your assets.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

You know, that advice kind of thematically makes, you know, it reminds me of a Wall street legend, an ETF legend, Jack Bogle. He was really, of course, into just, you know, let's make the Van Vanguard website so hard to log into so that you never have to log in and check your investment. So you never sell. And then you turn 80 all of a sudden and you have a big nest egg.

[Barry Ritholtz]

The reason he was against ETFs and I have broken with St. Jack over the years, he thought it made it too easy for people to trade right there assets, whereas mutual funds, you have to pick up a phone, call somebody, you don't get a print till the end of the day, that sort of thing. If only we had an ETF expert here to talk about these things with.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

Let's get to the drive to the close. We're here with Bloomberg News cross asset reporter Isabel Lee in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio talking about ETFs and talking about new entrants into the $13 trillion ETF industry. This year we have 60 new entrants. So this is issuers, these are fund managers coming up one day and saying, I want to launch an ETF.

[Isabel Lee]

Yes. So this and last year we saw 60 new entrants. And if you look at Pre pandemic like 2022 today, we've seen more ETF launches than the period going back to 1993 when the first ETF was launched in Canada, mind you, because that's what Canadians always like to remind us of the Americans that they launched the first etf. So this is just, just we always talk about how There are new ETFs in the market, but I think we forget sometimes to talk about the new players because do you think that, I mean, sure, Roundhill, Rex, Vanguard and all those, they will keep launching. But the new players is what's interesting. For instance, this year we saw Man Group, that's the world's largest privately publicly listed hedge fund. They launch an ETF picture that's a European asset manager. In Europe they have around $900 trillion in $900 billion in assets and they launch an ETF. And then in the story we highlight a 25 year old lady, ex Jane street, ex MIT, who also launched an ETF as a one woman ban. And all she had was a great idea, maybe 300,000 also to really start it going. And now it's live. It has around 6 million assets which is decent. But it just shows that almost everyone with certain level of proficiency, proficiency can launch an etf.

[Barry Ritholtz]

So I was speaking earlier this year to Dave Notting, he's president of ETF.com and he told me there's going to be a thousand new ETFs issued this year. That that's a giant number. What he mentioned that was so surprising was how many of these were active.

[Isabel Lee]

Yes.

[Barry Ritholtz]

And then in addition to that there are some that are leveraged directional bets, option based, just very exotic derivative strategies. What are you seeing in ETF World and are any of these thousand new ETFs going to stick?

[Isabel Lee]

So that's exactly what Emily and I, we sit next to each other, we always talk about how fee compression actually is a story of yesterday. Because now to stand out in this Wild west where $13 trillion nearly dominate this space with more than 4,500 products, it's really to have this crazy idea that will make people's jaw drop. So this year we saw the filing of an 5x ETF that's leveraged ETF to the maximum 5x. We've never seen that before, the max.

[Barry Ritholtz]

Because doesn't that mean the following year we're going to get a 10x?

[Isabel Lee]

I don't even know if that's the 5x will be approved. We don't even know if 3x will be approved. In Europe they have a couple of 3x ETFs but non tracking single stocks, all usually indexes. But this year we've seen that in the US 3x launches, 5x launches. So because we're seeing active ETFs fees are actually becoming higher. And Emily wrote a story about that. And I think investors just don't care so much because what they want is this sophisticated strategy wrapped in an ETF where you can just click buy. Because now technology has made it so easy and a confetti will probably pop up, up and then you have that.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

ETF in an ironic twist. And I'm going to bring up Bogle again. Bogle may not have wanted this, but you know, by making passive ETF so cheap, basically you can get the S&P 500 ETF for like no money. It almost opens up a slice of your portfolio to add a 5% allocation to an ETF that's more expensive. So that's what we're seeing that a lot of these issuers feel like they actually have the Runway to launch Something that's maybe 90 basis points.

[Kathy Wilde]

Points.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

Talk about what? This story that you wrote about this, this Exchange street person, you know, coming out and launching their own ETF, they're only 25 years old. What did it teach you about what the barriers to entry are to this market?

[Isabel Lee]

The work, it's becoming lower because look, you need less than half a million dollars and you can launch an etf, but the story doesn't end there because you have to keep it running. And not only do you have it to keep it running, have to market it and get flows. And this is title, actually they're a full stack white label platform. They said you need around 65,000 to set up a fund, around 225,000 to really just keep it going with operating expenses. But then you need a great idea and you need to get people to give you capital. And we've seen that while we've seen record launches, closures are also on the uptick. We've seen one ETF close for every five that have launched. I mean probably just, just the product of a healthy ecosystem, but we're really seeing that it's becoming harder to stand out, to survive. Which is why you see more and more of these niche crazy filings. But a lot of the folks really. So for instance, this 25 year old Sophia Massey, she handed out the day to day outsourcing custody to a network of specialist providers.

[Barry Ritholtz]

And so you mention the marketing of this and some of the ETFs that caught my eye early earlier this year are from very well regarded, very popular analysts, guys like Dan Ives and Tom Lee, both of those have attracted billions with a b of dollars. 225,000 to launch, 225,000 to carry. It sounds like you need 100 million or 200 million. If you hit a billion, that's a successful ETF, isn't it?

[Isabel Lee]

Absolutely. Well, first of all, it depends. Like Sophia, she wants 100 million, she says, and she'll be happy, of course, I'm sure the bigger the better. But 1 billion is a stunning success. Tom Lee and Dan Ives achieve those benchmark milestones in less than a year. So it goes to show that, yes, it really is. Because in the beginning people were probably like, they're just talking heads maybe, what do they know about it? But their followers followed and piled cash. I think now Tom Lee has nearly $4 billion. I think Dan Ives just recently hit around 1 billion. So those are really impressive.

[Barry Ritholtz]

But both of those guys were early to AI, early to Nvidia, early to tech. They're in the hot space and have been there for quite a while. Not a surprise they're doing that well.

[Isabel Lee]

And not only do they get flaws, but their performance is also great. Like year to date, both ETFs are up 31% for Ives, 20% for Granny. So sometimes you see Cathie Wood. She there was a time she was getting inflows, but then performance was down. And there was a time performance was up but she wasn't getting the inflows. But both these guys have it.

[Barry Ritholtz]

Both they're killing it.

[Interviewer/Host (possibly Emily Griffeo or a Bloomberg host)]

It really speaks to the strength of having a winning strategy. Isabel Lee, Bloomberg News Cross Asset Reporter on everything that has to do with the $13 trillion ETF industry. Thank you for joining us.

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This is the Bloomberg businessweek daily podcast available on Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcast. Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5pm Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live Every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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[Mark Dixon]

Lenovo.

[Barry Ritholtz]

I'm Barry Ritholtz inviting you to join me for the Masters in Business podcast. Every week we bring you fascinating conversations with the people who shape markets, investing and business CEOs, fund managers, billionaires, Nobel laureates, traders, analysts, economists, everybody that affects what's going on in the market. Whether you own stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, crypto. You really need to hear these conversations. Sometimes it's behaviorists like Dick Thaler or Bob Shiller. Sometimes it's fund managers like Peter Lynch, Bill Miller, Ray Dalio. Sometimes it's authors. Michael Lewis, author of the Big Short and Moneyball. Regardless of the conversation, these are the folks that move markets each week. That's the Masters in Business podcast with me. Barry Ritholtz. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.