Lincoln’s private-markets fund with Bain will invest in a cross section of credit, including loans to companies and loans to finance purchases of assets such as cars and real estate. A portion of the fund will also be invested in more easily traded assets. The vehicle will accept investors of any wealth level and allow them to cash out once a quarter. Lincoln thinks it is the first insurance company to launch private-market funds.
Nasdaq Texas
Nasdaq, long associated with its prime Times Square location, will open its first regional headquarters in Dallas. It’s the latest push by a New York institution into Texas, which is trying to unseat the Northeast as the epicenter of U.S. business.
Government Land
The federal government is the country’s largest land owner, controlling 650 million acres, or more than a quarter of all U.S. land.
Small Businesses
The small-business optimism index fell in February but remained above average. Uncertainty, however, rose to the second-highest level on record.
Luxury Spending
American consumers’ spending on the luxury market, which includes high-end department stores and online platforms, fell 9.3% in February from a year earlier, worse than the 5.9% decline in January.
Credit Card Debt
As of the fourth quarter of 2024, the average household’s credit-card debt surpassed $10,000, adjusted for inflation, for the first time since 2009.
Global Fundraising
Total global real-estate fundraising by private-equity firms that invest in real estate was $10 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, a five-year low.
Layoffs
U.S. employers announced 172,017 layoffs for February, up 245% from January and the highest monthly count since July 2020. More than one-third of the total came from the DOGE effort to reduce the federal headcount.
BX $8 Billion
Blackstone closed this week on an $8 billion commercial real-estate debt fund, matching the record for this type of investment vehicle and offering another sign of a property-market rebound.
Data Centers
Among 569 data-center facilities in markets across the Americas, the vacancy rate stood at 4.9% at the end of 2024, and 83% of upcoming capacity is already preleased. In the second half of 2024, North American markets reached 20 gigawatts of operational capacity, with 1.5 GWs added in the second half specifically. That brought the total capacity added in 2024 to 3.2 GWs.