It’s a new day for financial regulations in the U.S., with new leaders updating and streamlining the rules that govern both old business institutions—like Wall Street—and new ones—like cryptocurrency. Last week, I attended the Milken Institute’s Future of Finance event in Washington, D.C., which opened with Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig excitedly sharing their plans for their organizations.

The Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, housed in a historic bank building a block from the White House, was filled with a friendly audience listening intently to their plans: a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency and digital assets, working together to define and classify different types of tokenized securities, bringing investors in the digital and crypto world back to the U.S., creating a regulatory pathway for new technological developments in investing and finance. And Atkins also talked about his initiative to “make IPOs great again,” streamlining rules and requirements to make it easier and more desirable for companies to go public and turn to Wall Street for money.

“We really are now, in financial services, at the cusp of a really exciting new frontier,” Atkins said.

But outside the event, the world was changing quickly. And while Atkins and Selig are making plans for new ways businesses can work in finance, dark clouds hang overhead. It was nice to be at an event in Washington last week at which war was not the dominant topic, but the war with Iran certainly is making anyone’s path to new investment a bit more precarious.

I spoke with Drew Bernstein, cofounder and co-chairman of Marcum Asia, about how the finance world has taken a sharp turn, and what companies that are eyeing an IPO can do about it. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.

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The U.S. has been in conflict with Iran for just over a week, but the impact of the war is now hitting Americans’ budgets deeply. On Monday, the price at the pump had gone up an average of 50 cents a gallon since the war with Iran started. In the afternoon, the price of a barrel of oil fell in late afternoon when he told CBS News, “I think the war is very complete, pretty much.” But Tuesday morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said it would be the “most intense day of strikes” against Iran, calling the war’s timeline into question and tipping the markets again, but leaving crude oil prices around $85 a barrel by midday.

President Donald Trump and his allies have so far been dismissive of how the spike in fuel prices will impact the average consumer. He said in a Truth Social post it “is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace.” John Catsimatidis, Trump ally and billionaire owner of United Refining Company, told Forbes last week he encourages consumers to stop panicking and “suffer for one month” so the U.S. can “take out the terrorists.”

Consumers likely don’t feel that way. Forbes senior contributor Mayra Rodriguez Valladares writes that many consumers were already under strain, with 46% citing unaffordable prices as a pressure point. Loan delinquencies are up, and a quarter of people using buy-now-pay-later services are drawing the money to buy groceries. And analysts fear that higher oil prices will worsen inflation—in turn making the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee less likely to lower baseline interest rates when they meet next week.

The volatility has been taking its toll on businesses and consumers. The Cboe Volatility Index, which tracks implied volatility on the S&P 500 over the next 30 days, has looked like a roller coaster track for the last week. On Monday, the index spiked to its highest point since Trump announced his so-called reciprocal tariffs last spring, but then fell after his comments to CBS News. Regardless, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said on Tuesday’s earnings call that this disruption could lead to catastrophic consequences for the global economy, especially as global oil inventories are already at a five-year low.

Americans are dealing with more than just higher oil prices. A total of 92,000 non-farm jobs were lost in February, increasing the unemployment rate to 4.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This comes after BLS’ massive revision last month for 2025: Just 181,000 U.S. jobs were added last year, down from the 584,000 that were originally reported.

Under President Trump, the rules around SBA loans have tightened, making it harder to get funds. SBA has been constantly updating and revamping regulations, and in February announced a big change: As of March 1, loans are only available to businesses owned by U.S. citizens. While the doors had been closing for funding for noncitizen-owned businesses, the SBA had previously granted loans to those with up to 5% ownership who weren’t citizens, including green card holders. Forbes contributor Natalie Madeira Cofield writes that Trump’s SBA defended the change by reiterating the department’s commitment to driving economic growth and job creation for citizens.

Collections agency The Kaplan Group looked at what it means to stop this funding for businesses owned by green card holders. While exact numbers are elusive, Kaplan notes that immigrants are 80% more likely to start businesses in the U.S. than citizens, and removing the option of lower-interest and longer-term SBA loans puts their ability to finance new business ventures in jeopardy. Lending industry estimates indicate that 5% to 15% of all SBA loans went to noncitizen-owned businesses—potentially depriving businesses of $2.2 billion to $6.7 billion in financing.

With higher fuel prices, rising instability around the world and long security wait times as the Department of Homeland Security remains partially shut down, it’s the beginning of a tough time for the travel industry—and flight attendants unions at two major carriers are at key points in bargaining.

United Airlines flight attendants, members of the Association of Flight Attendants, are close to reaching a tentative contract agreement, writes Forbes senior contributor Ted Reed. Negotiations last week progressed well, both the union and the airline said, and both sides expect to wrap up the proposed contract at their next bargaining session at the end of this month. Nathan Lopp, United’s vice president of labor relations, said the airline made a proposal that would make its flight attendants the highest paid in the industry.

Completing a negotiated contract, however, doesn’t guarantee the membership will accept it. In voting that finished last week, 60% of unionized flight attendants for American Airlines regional partner PSA, operating as American Eagle, rejected a tentative contract, Reed wrote. The three-year contract would have provided a 30% to 50% increase in compensation with a 10% wage increase, pay for time on the ground spent boarding passengers—which is currently unpaid—and other scheduling improvements and flexibility. Boarding pay was set to take effect a year after the contract started, which a flight attendant told Reed was one of the most contentious issues.

PSA’s flight attendants and American Airlines are expected to return to the bargaining table to start over again in the near future, though no dates have been set, Reed wrote.

How To Deal With 2026’s Market Uncertainty

In January, Marcum Asia cofounder and co-chairman Drew Bernstein wrote an article for Forbes.com heralding 2026 as the potential year of the monster IPO. SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic had all talked about making their market debuts this year—and each could feasibly get a starting valuation of $1 trillion or more. Adding to that, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins is working on reforms to reduce regulation, making it easier and more desirable to go public.

And then the last six weeks happened: war in Iran, SaaS-pocalypse, tariffs off and on, skyrocketing energy prices. Suddenly, Bernstein told me, nothing seems to be certain anymore. And if there’s one thing that the markets don’t like, he said, it’s uncertainty. I spoke with Bernstein last week about the 2026 prognosis for Wall Street.

This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity.

Last year, Elon Musk teased that SpaceX would likely IPO this year, and there’s been so much speculation about OpenAI doing the same. Do you think they will?

Bernstein: If they can get the valuations. They’re one of those companies that were sitting on the fence waiting for that window, some of those potentially trillion-dollar valuations.

At this point, it’s equally possible 2026 could be a blockbuster year for IPOs, and it could be an IPO winter. It’s a tough one to call. The most important factors that could determine what it comes down to is a few AI labs in Silicon Valley and a man sitting in the White House.

What I’m telling my clients right now: Timing is everything. And my advice to my clients now is to do everything possible to be prepared for that IPO window when it opens so you could be at least part of the first wave. Because with things moving so fast, who knows how long it’s going to take and will last.

I tell them I wouldn’t get overly fixated on valuations, since it’s a moving target right now. They fluctuate so much and so fast. You can always do a smaller deal now and come back and raise as much money as you want when things are more in your favor.

If you’re an international company that we work with, they’re still eager to list on U.S. stock markets. Many of them are putting in teams and systems to be ready to go public as soon as the kind of winds shift in their favor.

SEC Chairman Atkins has said the number of publicly traded companies is down by about 40% since the 1990s, and regulations drove companies away from the markets. From where you sit, is that what keeps companies private, or are some of the larger economic and unpredictable factors at play?

I would say the unpredictability.

We’ve always had what I consider to be a disclosure-based system: As long as you disclose all the relevant facts of your IPO, then you can go public. There were no specific rules for any types of companies—and that’s why I was so against how they held back a company like Shein. You would think regulators would be the first in line pushing them to go public, because that’s the process by which you can compel them to disclose all the things you’re concerned about.

The rule changes that he’s proposing will help the markets here become more competitive. I don’t think it’s a reason that people came or didn’t, because I think traditionally we’ve been the most inviting markets to come to and the gold standard. The U.S. markets are not government-sponsored platforms. They’re real businesses and they have to be competitive. I would assume that we would like to maintain that status as the top markets in the world, because they are the deepest, most diversified sources of capital.

For companies that are on the fence about an IPO, what is some advice you would give them?

The thing to do is to be prepared. Look, you want to raise money. It’s actually pretty simple.

You have to explain your science. If you’re a biotech company, that’s easy. Show me your scientists, show me the studies and convince me of your science. What is it that makes your company special?

Explain to me how you can monetize that within a 3-to-5 year window. Sometimes, you come across a lot of solutions that are not commercially producible. So you have to be able to explain to me how you can monetize this investment so I can have my liquidity.

Most importantly, do the first two in less than 15 minutes, because that’s the investment banker’s attention span. What that really means is you have to have a very well put together business plan. And you have to be able to explain crystal clearly how you make money. Growth and innovation alone don't work anymore.

Lastly, have an audit. Prove it to me. A lot of times people sit down and they show you something, and by the time it’s audited, it looks very different. It’s unlikely that you’re going to be able to get an investment banker to spend significant time with you unless you can show him an audit where he has confidence that if he’s going to put the resources into it, it’s real.

Contract logistics provider GXO Logistics appointed Mark Suchinski as its new chief financial officer, effective April 1. Suchinski joins the company from The GEO Group, Inc., where he worked in the same role, as well as Spirit AeroSystems prior to that.

Automotive safety systems leader Autoliv promoted Monika Grama to its chief financial officer and executive vice president, finance role, effective April 1. Grama currently works as the vice president of finance for the company’s Europe, Middle East and Africa division, and she will succeed Fredrik Westin.

Digital infrastructure company Equinix selected Olivier Leonetti to be its next chief financial officer, effective March 16. Leonetti joins the firm from power management company Eaton where he worked in the same role, and he will succeed Keith Taylor, who is retiring.

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