“The restaurant hosted just over 20 corporate holiday events last week,” said Carly McLaurin, event coordinator for Celtic Developers Group, which owns Papillon. “Even with most tables and spaces booked, our regulars will pack into the bars to enjoy their after-work beer.”
Losers: High-Flying Fintechs
The worst performer in a basket of 75 information-technology companies this year was PayPal Holdings Inc., the pandemic darling that at one point was worth more than Citigroup and Goldman Sachs combined. The fintech’s stock has plummeted 63% this year, shaving a whopping $141 billion off its market capitalization.
At issue, analysts say, is the fact that growth hasn’t been as good as it was during the pandemic, when consumers were stuck at home and doing much more of their shopping online.
PayPal’s big drop has had implications for the rest of fintech, with closely held firms benchmarking their own private valuations to that of the tech giant. One by one this year, companies including Stripe Inc., Checkout.com and Klarna have been forced to lower their valuations in line with those of publicly traded peers.
“The shift in Klarna’s valuation is entirely due to investors suddenly voting in the opposite manner to the way they voted for the past few years,” Michael Moritz, a partner at Sequoia, said when Klarna announced its latest fundraising in July. “Eventually, after investors emerge from their bunkers, the stocks of Klarna and other first-rate companies will receive the attention they deserve”.
Winners: Points Junkies
For credit—card points junkies, 2022 was the year of the airport lounge.
JPMorgan opened its first Chase Sapphire Lounge in Hong Kong this year, while Capital One Financial Corp. also debuted a lounge of its own in Dallas. The king of airport lounges — American Express Co. — is in the process of expanding and reopening its Centurion Lounges at San Francisco International Airport and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport with new outposts planned for Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport.
And gone are the days of lousy sandwiches and uncomfortable furniture. AmEx has outfitted some of its locations with everything from percussion massage therapy offerings to nail-buffing services. Capital One announced it’s partnering with José Andrés Group on new lounge concepts it’s testing out in New York and Washington airports, with Spanish-style tapas set to appear on menus.
Loser: Warren Buffett
While the Fed’s moves to fight inflation boosted net interest income for the biggest lenders, the central bank also sparked fears it would send the US economy into a painful recession. That would probably cause credit losses to soar, ultimately hurting lenders’ profits.
That’s meant bank investors including the likes of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. have seen the value of those holdings plummet in recent months. Weary investors shaved a quarter of a trillion dollars of market value off the four biggest US banks this year alone.
No major bank has had it worse than Bank of America, which counts Berkshire Hathaway as its largest shareholder and has seen its stock drop about 29% since the start of 2022. That shaved about $13 billion off the Oracle of Omaha’s stake this year alone. Even so, he’s still roughly doubled his money. In the first quarter, Buffett also took a 2.9% stake in Citigroup, which posted the second-worst stock performance among major banks, with a 27% drop for the year.
--With assistance from Noah Buhayar, Hannah Levitt, Katherine Doherty and Sridhar Natarajan.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.