February 24, 2023 - Market Daily

Who Had the Biggest Impact on NewSpace in the Past Ten Years? Our Answers May Surprise You

Market Daily Staff on February 24, 2023

In the 20th century, only governments went to space. Today, private companies and citizens build rockets, launch satellites, and cross the Kármán Line as part of a NewSpace economy that soon could reach $1 trillion.

NewSpace has made giant leaps thanks to people who believe space should belong to all — and have devoted themselves to that mission. Meet P who had the most significant impact on NewSpace in the past ten years.

Elon Musk

Musk has broken new ground in the sky for decades as the founder of SpaceX. His was the first private company to launch a liquid-fueled rocket, dock a vehicle with the International Space Station, land an orbital-class reusable rocket, fly crewed missions, and carry an all-private crew to the ISS.

SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket has revolutionized the sector, completing more than 130 reflights that allow private companies to send people and payload to space at a fraction of the cost. Musk essentially has created a space rideshare system that entrepreneurs use to populate satellite constellations capable of providing global broadband internet, for instance.

What’s next? NASA has contracted SpaceX to land humans on the Moon, and Musk predicts a Mars landing in 2029.

Jeff Bezos

Time Magazine named Bezos, the founder and executive chair of Amazon, as its 1999 Person of the Year for transforming how we shop. The following year, Bezos founded Blue Origin, intending to transform how we think about space.

Like SpaceX, Blue Origin built its ethos on reusability. In 2015, its New Shepard vehicle became the first first-stage rocket system to touch down on land after launch. Since then, the New Shepard system has flown more than 20 missions, introducing the world to commercial space tourism.

In 2021, Blue Origin sold its first commercial seat for $28 million and later became the first private company to carry paying customers on a suborbital spacecraft. The company says its high-payload New Glenn vehicle will “build the road to space,” and its Blue Moon lunar lander will help create habitats on the Moon.

Pete Worden

Worden, an authority on civil and military space, calls planets boring. He wants to visit stars like Alpha Centauri and finally answer humanity’s deepest question: Are we alone?

The retired Air Force Brigadier General guided the Ames Research Center for ten years, earning the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation’s Innovation Award in 2010 for his work invigorating civil and commercial space exploration. After 40 years in the public sector, Worden joined Breakthrough Initiatives, a visionary non-profit founded by billionaire investor Yuri Milner and the late Stephen Hawking that scans the skies for habitable planets and other life. He also wants to go there.

Worden is the executive director of Breakthrough Starshot, which proposes harnessing light-powered space technology for interstellar travel. Starshot’s mission is to visit Alpha Centauri within a generation, which has been Worden’s vision since he shepherded the 100-Year-Starship Study at Ames.

Lori Garver

Garver, a former deputy administrator of NASA, helped transform the environment in which companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin thrive today. During her four years at NASA, Garver championed opening space exploration to a private sector that could build and launch systems at lower costs. This made Garver a self-described “space pirate,” with which others agreed.

In her 2022 book Escaping Gravity, Garver detailed how she sought to lower space transportation costs through commercial partnefive rships — and the obstructions she faced from politics and legacy constituents tethered to the old operating system.

As Musk said, Garver’s “heavy lifting” unwound the status quo and created opportunities for space entrepreneurs. Garver called that a “rescue mission” on behalf of NASA and the new space age.

“Lori made a real difference to the future of spaceflight,” Musk wrote in praising the book.

Dylan Taylor

Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager Space, is incubating the future of space exploration. The company provides digital satellites, propulsion technology, and Earth visualization systems in its suite of space tools. Voyager Space’s holdings incorporate some of the most inventive firms building tomorrow’s sustainable space economy.

Voyager Space’s most ambitious project is Starlab, the next-generation commercial space station. When it launches (planned for 2028), Starlab will feature the first science park in space; research platforms dedicated to physics, biology, and material science; and interior spaces designed by Hilton.

As a space philanthropist, Taylor also founded Space for Humanity, an award-winning philanthropic organization that mints citizen astronauts — two already — to share their life-changing perspectives with the world. Taylor himself is a citizen astronaut, having flown aboard NS-19 in 2021.

Space once belonged to institutions. Thanks to the NewSpace economy, fueled and funded by passionate agitators like these, space will soon belong to everyone.

John Gallo Honored as One of the Top 100 People in Finance

Market Daily Staff on February 24, 2023

John Gallo, Global Head of Sales and Co-Head of Global Markets Americas (GMA) for BNP Paribas, was honored in 2021 as one of the top 100 people in finance.

In the accompanying Q&A, Gallo, who since receiving this honor has been promoted to Global Head of Sales and Head of Global Markets Americas, pointed out that GMA “delivered a record performance in 2020, outperforming all competitors in terms of market share gains, including U.S. banks.” He noted that was at least in part due to the fact that BNP Paribas, a bank with operations in 68 countries, agreed in 2019 to “assume Deutsche Bank’s global prime finance and electronic equities business and clients.”

Additionally, John Gallo mentioned BNP Paribas’ acquisition in July 2021 of Exane, a leader in European equities.

“Leveraging Exane’s expertise in cash equities (execution and research) and derivatives,” he told Top 100 Magazine, “the transaction will further strengthen and widen the range of equity and derivatives services BNP Paribas can offer to institutional investors and corporates globally.”

In his estimation, the Deutsche Bank and Exane transactions signal the ambition of BNP Paribas “to become a global equities powerhouse,” as evidenced by its strength in fixed income, currencies and commodities. There is further proof of that in the fact that BNP is pursuing what he called “ambitious growth strategies in various emerging markets,” including Latin America. He offered as an example the fact that BNP had obtained a banking license in Mexico.

“We are already a clear leader in Europe, and strong in Asia and Latam,” he told Top 100 Magazine. “We recognize that one of our largest growth opportunities is in the U.S. and it is critical to be a real competitor on the world stage. In fact, our goal is to become a top player in global markets by 2025.”

He noted that BNP Paribas’ Corporate and Institutional Banking (CIB) franchise is “a globally recognized leader across 56 countries,” offering “capital markets, securities services, financing, treasury, and advisory solutions to roughly 18,000 corporate and institutional clients.” His shared leadership of global markets, meanwhile, offers “investment, hedging, financing, and market intelligence across all asset classes.”

John Gallo, who also serves on BNP’s management committee, has over 25 years’ experience in the financial industry and is regarded as one of the foremost authorities in areas like stocks, bonds, capital formation, hedge funds and asset management. (He recently shared his expertise in a Bloomberg piece.) He joined BNP Paribas in 2017, after serving the two previous years as the Head of Institutional Client Group at Deutsche Bank.

He described BNP Paribas as “truly a global bank” in the Top 100 Magazine interview, with a presence in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, and increasing growth in the Americas.

“We’ve scaled in a way that helps all clients—individuals, community associations, entrepreneurs, SMEs, corporates, and institutions—to realize their potential through solutions spanning financing, investment, savings, hedging, and protection insurance,” he told the publication. “In addition, we are a leader in sustainable finance and diversity and inclusion.”

He added that no two days are alike for him, and that he relishes working with “a large group of highly intelligent and driven people, who collaborate to create value for the largest and most sophisticated institutions and corporations in the world.”

John Gallo, a graduate of Fordham University, spent the early years of his finance career at Lehman Brothers, starting off in the back office and in time becoming the youngest managing director in the firm’s history. He later assumed the position of Global Head of Liquid Market Sales, one of Lehman’s largest divisions.

He also worked at Citigroup from 2008-15, serving as Head of Investor Sales for Global Markets in North America.

John Gallo has also served on the boards of such companies as Clickpay, Adjuvance Technologies, AMN, Inc. and Hourglass, and sits on the executive committee and the board of The Cathedral School of St. John the Divine in New York City, while also chairing the school’s finance committee.

Further, he endowed a scholarship to Columbia University in honor of his late nephew.

He emphasized in the Top 100 Magazine interview that he is particularly proud of his three children – his daughters, Annabelle and Jocelyn, and his son, Griffin. “Each in their own way, are the most incredible human beings,” he told the publication, “and I could not love them more or be prouder of them.”