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Brent Swings to Rare Discount Against Middle East Oil Marker

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Brent, the global crude oil benchmark, is trading at a rare discount to its Middle Eastern counterpart, as President Donald Trump cracks down on Russian barrels and a glut is forecast for later in the year.



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Finland to Weigh Courier Posti IPO as Soon as This Year

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Finland is considering an initial public offering of Posti Group Oyj on the Helsinki stock exchange as soon as this year, according to people familiar with the matter, kicking off a long-touted privatization of the country’s postal service.



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Shares of Blockchain Lender Figure Surge In Early First-Day Trading

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Shares of blockchain lender Figure opened at $36, about 44% higher in first-day trading, on Thursday in the company’s initial public offering, marking another public debut from a fintech this week.

The San Francisco-based company, which has built a blockchain-based platform for lending, trading and investing in consumer credit and digital assets, had set a price range for its IPO of $18 to $20 per share. But as of late Wednesday, the company had increased the price of its shares to $25.

Figure trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol FIGR.

The top end of that new price range gave the company an initial valuation of over $5 billion, and means that Figure raised about $787.5 million from the initial public offering.

At the time of its $200 million Series D raise in 2021, Figure was valued at $3.2 billion.

Since its 2018 inception, the company has raised $1.5 billion venture and debt funding, per Crunchbase data. Figure was “GAAP profitable” in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to , CEO Michael Tannenbaum, and “EBITDA in the most recent quarter was in the 40s margin.”

“So I think we definitely have that rare combination of growth and margin,” he told Crunchbase News in an interview.

The executive is clearly bullish on his 550-person company’s future.

“We’ve actually been building in the blockchain space since the beginning,” Tannenbaum told Crunchbase News. “We weren’t the first to put consumer loans on blockchain. We were the second. But we were the first to securitize them and to get them rated, and then to get that AAA rating.”

He also acknowledges that there has been a significant increase in interest in tokenization, and claims that Figure is “the market leader in tokenization of private credit.”

“On the debt side, we do the most tokenization of anyone, with about 75% market share,” Tannenbaum added.

The open IPO market

Figure’s IPO follows a string of well-received venture-backed debuts, including the blockbuster market entry by design software provider Figma, which saw shares triple in first-day trading (although they have come back down to earth since).

Fellow fintech Klarna made its public debut on Wednesday. The Swedish company’s stock climbed by about 16% in first-day trading.

Both IPOs also come amid renewed interest in investment in fintech startups, with multiple rounds above $100 million closing this year.

Overall, the IPO dam in fintech finally seems to have broken in 2025.

Since the beginning of the year, several companies in the fintech space have either gone public or filed to do so.

  • In early June, shares of Circle closed up 168% at $83.29 in their first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, minting the stablecoin issuer with a market cap of around $16.7 billion and renewing hopes for an IPO market rebound. More recently, shares have traded in the $118 range.
  • Digital bank Chime went public on June 12, and came out swinging. Chime’s shares shot up 37% in first-day trading on Nasdaq, closing at $37. Shares have traded around $23 in recent days.

Meanwhile, digital wealth management startup Wealthfront filed confidentially for a U.S. initial public offering on June 23. In early June, crypto exchange Gemini confidentially filed its own plans for a U.S. IPO. Its stock was also set to start trading this week. And also in June, expense management firm Navan (formerly TripActions) also filed confidentially for a U.S. IPO.

Related Crunchbase query:

Related reading:

Illustration: Dom Guzman


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Funding & Business

Customers Bank CEO: Anticipating Rate Cut

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Customers Bank CEO Sam Sidhu tells Open Interest he’s expecting a stronger half of 2025 thanks to stronger pipelines. He says customers are optimistic and eager for a rate cut. (Source: Bloomberg)



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