NEWSLETTER of June 19, 2026

The following content has been added at finexpert:

BCG
HOW AI-FIRST BANKS ARE REWRITING THE RULES OF RETAIL BANKING
Retail banks are well-positioned to derive significant value from GenAI and agentic AI. Rich data repositories, widespread digitization, and a customer base already accustomed to AI-native experiences in retail, travel, and digital media mean the conditions for transformation are largely in place. Yet for many institutions, at-scale value remains elusive. AI investments have delivered results in pockets, improving isolated processes here or accelerating a specific decision there, but without fundamentally changing how the bank operates. In contrast, AI-first banks are taking a more strategic approach by prioritizing three or four business functions for end-to-end transformation. They are realizing significant benefits from GenAI by reorganizing work so that AI performs 70% to 80% of the toil or repetitive tasks and 30% to 50% of the reasoning tasks. >more

World Economic Forum | Oliver Wyman
DEEPENING DIVIDES: THE COST OF A MORE FRAGMENTED FINANCIAL SYSTEM
The period spanning 2025 and early 2026 marked a turning point for the global trade and financial systems as states deployed economic statecraft on a scale not seen in the modern era, accelerating and deepening fragmentation. This insight report offers new quantitative analysis that measures the economic drag of current trade and financial policies as well as the potential cost of an increasingly plausible worst-case scenario. >more

ZEW
EUROPEAN ENTREPRENEURSHIP: TRENDS IN START-UPS AND SCALE-UPS IN FRANCE, GERMANY AND THE UK
This policy brief examines entrepreneurial ecosystems in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom using data on more than nine million firm births between 2009 and 2023. The study aims to assess both the quantity of start-ups and their quality, measured by their potential to become scale-ups. By analyzing regional patterns of entrepreneurship, the research provides new insights into Europe’s competitiveness and the factors that influence entrepreneurial success. A key finding is that all three countries display considerable unrealized scale-up potential. While many firms exhibit characteristics associated with future growth, the number that achieve large-scale expansion falls short of expectations. This suggests that barriers to growth have become increasingly important in recent years. >more

KfW Research
KFW-KOMMUNALPANEL 2026
The KfW Local Government Panel 2026 reveals a pessimistic mood amongst local authority finance departments, which are having to deal with a record deficit for the second year running. As a result, investment activity is stagnating and the investment backlog is rising significantly. Investment plans offer a ray of hope, however, as one in five local authorities is already planning additional investment for the current year through special funds, and investment plans are unusually high. This year’s special topic examines local authorities’ shareholdings in public enterprises. Local authorities are supporting their municipal utilities in the heating transition and climate transformation, mainly through guarantees and by foregoing dividends. However, the financial sustainability of public enterprises varies greatly from sector to sector. >more

THE HIDDEN COST OF STOCK MARKET CONCENTRATION: WHEN FUNDS HIT REGULATORY LIMITS
Lubos Pastor, Taisiya Sikorskaya, and Jinrui Wang
2026
As stock market concentration has risen, regulatory limits on fund portfolio concentration have become increasingly binding, especially for large-cap growth funds. When funds approach these limits, they trim their largest holdings and reduce equity exposure.  Funds perform worse when constrained.  A constraint-based ownership measure predicts stock returns, particularly among the largest firms. These findings suggest that high market concentration can distort stock prices by limiting the ability of optimistic investors to scale their positions. Just like short-sale constraints can produce overpricing by limiting pessimistic investors' views, constraints on long positions can generate underpricing by suppressing optimists' views. >more

SECONDARY MARKETS FOR VC-BACKED STARTUP EQUITY
Daniel Bias, Johan Cassel, and Berk A. Sensoy
2026
This paper provides the first systematic evidence on secondary markets for equity in VC-backed startups, a fast-growing segment of private capital markets. Using proprietary data from a large intermediary, we show that shares typically trade at a discount to prior venture capital valuations, with discounts narrowing when buyer demand is strong. We find that market activity responds to new information: in an event study, order flow and prices react quickly to VC financing events. Furthermore, secondary prices are forward-looking and predict future VC valuations. These signals are partially incorporated by mutual funds valuing their startup holdings. By providing both liquidity and price discovery, secondary markets are becoming an integral part of private capital markets, and their importance is likely to grow as startups remain private longer. >more