March 2026

Newsletter March 2026

March Recap

This month was a special one for WiF, as we celebrated Women’s History Month and welcomed our new members. During this time, we held informational webinars and technical workshops, giving our members the chance to explore various paths after university while also enhancing their finance knowledge.

Welcoming New Members and a Deep Dive into Valuation: This month, we had the pleasure of welcoming our new members and introducing them to the world of WiF. We began the workshop with a brief news recap before introducing the main valuation methods, with a strong focus on intrinsic valuation and DCF models.
International Women’s Day Brunch: On the 8th of March, our members came together over brunch, sharing stories and experiences while reflecting on their achievements and what it means to be part of this community.
“Building a Career in Markets”: In this webinar, we hosted Rinos Dimitriou, CEO, CIO, and founding partner of Elan Capital. After presenting his career journey, he engaged with our members by answering questions and sharing insights on fixed income, hedge funds, and career paths in markets.
MIT Sloan MBA Early Advising Session: Some of our members joined this session to learn more about MBA opportunities and the paths available after Bocconi. This session allowed participants to gain direct insights into the application process and curriculum from an MIT admissions officer.
Applications of Statistics in Finance Workshop: During this workshop, we discussed global financial news and explored how statistics is applied in finance through practical examples.
Stock Pitching Workshop: This very insighful workshop focused on what makes a strong stock pitch, as well as the key steps involved in preparing one.

Don’t miss out on our social media where we post our weekly tips, market news, and market quizzes as well as stories of women that keep inspiring us!

News Recap

Private Credit's Reality Check

For years, private credit was the finance world's favourite success story; a multi-trillion-dollar market that boomed by stepping in where banks wouldn't, offering loans to mid-sized companies outside of public markets. This month, however, cracks became harder to ignore. Blackstone's $82 billion private credit fund, BCRED, posted a total loss of 0.4% in February, its first monthly decline since September 2022.

The loss itself is small, but the context around it is what has rattled markets. Investors withdrew $3.7 billion from BCRED in the first quarter alone, surpassing the fund's typical quarterly redemption volume. Meanwhile, Blackstone also wrote down loans for select borrowers, including software firm Medallia. The fund isn't alone: Morgan Stanley and BlackRock were among the firms that moved to limit withdrawals from their own funds following a surge in redemption requests, a pattern that points to a broader liquidity squeeze across the sector.

The concerns go beyond individual funds. Private credit has come under growing scrutiny due to weakening credit quality, high exposure to vulnerable sectors such as software, and a general lack of transparency. That unease has spilled onto Wall Street: JPMorgan Chase marked down the value of certain loans to private credit players, a move that will reduce lending to these funds. Blackstone's own shares have dropped over 28% this year, reflecting how broadly investor sentiment has shifted.

Blackstone maintains that BCRED has delivered a 9.5% annualised return since inception and continues to outperform the leveraged loan market, and the hard data on defaults, while rising, remains relatively contained. But for a market that built its reputation on stability and steady returns, the current moment is a meaningful test. Private credit is no longer a niche alternative to public debt, and the higher the stakes, the more scrutiny it will face.

Oil, Inflation, and Volatility: Markets Under Pressure

The sharp escalation in conflict between the U.S., Israel, and Iran became the defining macroeconomic event of the month, clearly impacting global markets. The disruption of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy passages, has triggered a surge in oil prices. Brent crude climbed above $110 per barrel, representing a 50% increase in a month. This can be explained by the fact that around 20% of global oil supply passes through this strait. This rapid increase, which is the largest monthly oil surge since the 2022 energy crisis, has reignited inflation concerns just as many economies had begun stabilizing.

Equity markets were quickly affected by the crisis. Major indices fell into correction territory, with the Dow Jones and Nasdaq hitting multi-month lows by late March (the S&P 500, for example, declined by up to 10%). Investors turned to safe-haven assets, pushing gold higher and increasing market volatility. Rising energy costs have directly contributed to higher inflation expectations. Institutions revised forecasts upward, with the OECD projecting inflation of around 4.2% for 2026, while simultaneously lowering growth expectations. This has reignited the risk of stagflation, defined as a period of high inflation paired with weak economic growth.

Bond yields climbed in response, with U.S. two-year yields surpassing 4%, while borrowing costs increased globally. Higher mortgage rates and rising living expenses have placed additional strain on households, reducing purchasing power. For businesses, the effects have been particularly significant in sectors such as transport and airlines, which are now rerouting flights, adjusting operations, and increasing prices in response to the crisis. More generally, analysts estimate that the probability of a recession has risen to around 40–60%.

Dealflows and IPOs

Strategic Synergies in the Cloud: Alphabet’s $32 Billion Bet on Wiz

One of the most significant transactions to close this month was Alphabet’s acquisition of cloud security company Wiz. Google completed the deal on 11 March 2026, following unconditional EU antitrust approval in February, with the transaction valued at $32 billion in cash. This makes it the largest acquisition in Google’s history, surpassing its previous landmark deals.

The parties involved were Google LLC, part of Alphabet, and Wiz, an Israeli-American cybersecurity company founded in 2020. The transaction is particularly notable given that Wiz had previously turned down Google’s earlier $23 billion approach in 2024, signalling at the time a preference to remain independent and potentially pursue an IPO. Its eventual sale at a much higher valuation underlines both the company’s rapid growth and the premium now attached to high-quality cloud security platforms.

Google Cloud remains in intense competition with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, and Wiz strengthens its position in one of the most important areas of that contest: cloud and AI security. Wiz’s platform provides visibility across multiple cloud environments, helping organisations identify and manage threats across code, infrastructure, and runtime systems. Google has also confirmed that Wiz will continue to operate across major cloud providers.

The wider relevance of the deal lies in what it signals for the industry. Cybersecurity is no longer a peripheral support function, but a core competitive advantage in cloud computing. More broadly, the acquisition suggests that for many fast-growing technology firms, a strategic sale rather than an IPO may increasingly represent the most attractive exit route.

Technicals Explained

Brief Introduction of Blockchain and Decentralized Finance

First, let’s dive into what blockchain is. Think of a blockchain as a shared ledger. In traditional finance, a central authority such as a bank or clearinghouse is responsible for maintaining the definitive record of who owns what. Blockchain replaces that single authority with a distributed network of computers, each holding an identical copy of the same ledger.

Every time a new transaction is recorded, it is grouped with others into a “block”, cryptographically linked to the previous one and broadcast to the entire network. Once added, the record is effectively immutable: altering one block would require rewriting every subsequent block across thousands of nodes, making fraud computationally prohibitive.

Two key properties make this system compelling for finance:

Transparency and auditability. Every transaction is visible to participants, creating a permanent, tamper-evident audit trail. For accountants and auditors, this is significant, as reconciliation processes that currently take days could, in theory, become near-instantaneous.
Disintermediation. Because trust is enforced by the protocol rather than a third party, transactions can settle directly between counterparties, reducing settlement time, counterparty risk, and cost.

The most widely used blockchain platforms today are Bitcoin and Ethereum. Cryptocurrency is the native asset of a blockchain network: it incentivizes participants (miners or validators) who verify transactions and acts as a medium of exchange within the ecosystem.

Bitcoin, launched in 2009, was designed as a decentralized alternative to fiat currency, a store of value and payment system outside the control of any government or central bank. Its supply is capped at 21 million coins, giving it a scarcity profile similar to gold. Ether (ETH), the native currency of Ethereum, plays a slightly different role. It is primarily used to pay for computation on the network (a fee mechanism called “gas”) rather than as a pure store of value.

However, most cryptocurrencies do not function well as units of account or stable mediums of exchange due to their price volatility. As a result, regulators and accounting standard-setters continue to debate whether they should be classified as commodities, securities, or a new asset class.

In response to this limitation, stablecoins have emerged as an important evolution: cryptocurrencies pegged to a stable asset. Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) are among the largest and have become the dominant medium of exchange within DeFi because they address the volatility problem.

Building on these foundations, Decentalized Finance (DeFi) delivers services such as lending, borrowing, trading, and earning yield through software running on a blockchain rather than through traditional financial institutions. The key enabling technology is the smart contract: a self-executing program that automatically enforces the terms of an agreement.

In practice, this means a user can deposit cryptocurrency as collateral into a smart contract and receive a loan in stablecoins, with automatic liquidation if the collateral falls below a set threshold. No credit check, no loan officer, and no clearing delay. The protocol enforces everything.

DeFi’s core applications mirror traditional finance but are built on open, permissionless infrastructure. For example, decentralized exchanges like Uniswap allow users to trade assets via smart contracts using algorithmic pricing; lending protocols like Aave automate collateralized borrowing and lending; and yield farming allows users to earn returns by providing liquidity to these protocols.

Looking ahead, three trends are shaping the future of DeFi. First, real-world asset tokenization: financial institutions are increasingly tokenizing assets such as Treasury bills, money market funds, and real estate. Second, institutional-drade stablecoins, which are expanding beyond crypto-native use cases. Third, greater regulatory clarity, particularly in the EU with the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation and in the US with the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs, which is encouraging broader institutional participation.

Finance x Tech

OpenAI Slows Down to Win the Race

The phrase “Code Red” suggests urgency, but in OpenAI’s case, it may signal something more deliberate: a shift from expansion to discipline.

At the height of the generative AI boom, OpenAI behaved like a company trying to capture every adjacent opportunity. New products, experimental applications, and high-profile partnerships created the impression of a firm racing to define the entire AI stack at once. The recent decision to scale back initiatives like Sora, alongside pausing more controversial projects, indicates a change in posture.

A useful way to frame this shift is to distinguish between capability expansion and value capture. Over the past year, OpenAI has excelled at pushing the frontier of what AI systems can do. But capability alone does not guarantee sustainable economics. Many of its side ventures have consumed significant compute and talent without a clear path to monetisation.

This refocusing suggests that OpenAI is now prioritising value capture. This means concentrating resources on areas where it has both a competitive advantage and a clearer revenue model, most notably enterprise applications and the core ChatGPT ecosystem. In this sense, the “Code Red” moment is less about reacting to rivals like Google and more about internal optimisation.

The risk, however, lies in timing. By overextending earlier, OpenAI may have invited competition precisely when focus becomes critical.

The strategic pivot, therefore, should be seen not as a retreat, but as a necessary consolidation. The next phase of the AI race will not be won by breadth, but by the ability to translate technological leadership into durable economic moats.

Writer's Choice

The Rise of Secondaries

For many years, private equity followed a predictable cycle: buy a company, improve it, and exit through an IPO or a sale. As interest rates rose and weaker deal activity slowed exits, this cycle came under pressure, leaving trillions of dollars locked in ageing investments.

Private equity is, by nature, an illiquid asset class, with investments lasting up to 15 years. Against this drawback, secondaries emerged as a solution. What began as an activity handled by a few specialist firms has developed into a large and increasingly sophisticated market, compounding at around 15% annually over the past decade, with global volumes reaching $233bn in 2025.

In simple terms, secondaries allow investors to sell their stake in a private equity fund before it reaches maturity. For example, if an investor wants to exit in year six of a 15-year fund, a secondary buyer can step in, acquire that position, and hold it until the end. Today, the market takes two main forms: limited partner (LP)-led and general partner (GP)-led transactions. In LP-led transactions, buyers acquire fund stakes from existing investors. In GP-led deals, fund managers are the ones who initiate the process by transferring one or more portfolio companies into a continuation vehicle, a new fund typically backed by secondary investors. Existing investors can either cash out or roll their stake into the continuation vehicle, while the manager maintains control of the asset for a longer time.

The optimistic view is that, as traditional exits have become more constrained, continuation vehicles offer managers a way to realise liquidity for LPs while continuing to own their best-performing assets, frequently known as “trophy assets”. This shift is evident in market data, as GP-led transactions have grown from 32% of deal volume in 2018 to 50% in 2025, reflecting much of the recent growth in secondaries activity. However, this evolution raises an important question: do continuation vehicles genuinely provide flexibility, or do they simply allow private equity firms to extend ownership and fees on their strongest assets?

Woman of the Month

Andrea Botero

Our Woman of the Month is Andrea Botero. Originally from Medellín, Colombia, she is a second-year BIEF student, a member of Women in Finance since Fall 2024, and our current president.

During her school years, Andrea developed a strong interest in science and related fields. She pursued this passion by participating in international science olympiads, which gave her the opportunity to travel to countries such as Spain and Kazakhstan. It wasn’t until her final year, however, that her path began to shift.

While working on her graduation project, an analysis of how the revenue of Colombia’s largest commercial bank correlates with key macroeconomic indicators, she discovered her interest in economics. With this new focus, she decided to apply to Bocconi, choosing BIEF for its wide range of career opportunities.

From the very beginning of her university years, Andrea became actively involved in student associations. Through these experiences, she developed a growing interest in banking, which led her to apply for Spring Week opportunities in London. She secured positions in the Capital Markets Spring Week at Citi and the D.E. Shaw Spring Week, which allowed her to explore different areas and ultimately confirm her interest in investment banking.

This summer, Andrea will join PJT as an analyst in Strategic Advisory and Restructuring, a highly competitive and unique opportunity. She emphasizes how WiF provided her with the “help and guidance needed to transform an interest into tangible experiences,” enabling her to better understand the wide range of opportunities available and how to make the most of them through the support of more experienced members.

Now, as president, Andrea aims to make Women in Finance even more active by increasing members’ exposure to companies and industry leaders, while also showcasing the talent within the community.

Andrea's LinkedIn

2 Truths & 1 Lie

Results will be posted to Instagram!

The Indian rupee fell to an all-time low, dropping past ₹94 per US dollar, pressured by rising oil prices and India’s reliance on imports.
Autumn Durals Arkapaw became the first woman to ever win the Oscar for Best Cinematography, for her work on Sinners.
The European Central Bank cut interest rates by 25 basis points in March 2026 to support slowing economic growth.

WiF Recommends

The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy is a fundamental self-help book that explains how small, consistent actions lead to significant long-term success. It offers a practical framework for mastering habits, tracking progress, and harnessing the power of incremental gains.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre is a classic fictionalized biography of Jesse Livermore, one of the greatest speculators of all time. It provides timeless lessons on market psychology, the importance of patience, and the mental discipline required to navigate the highs and lows of trading. It is one of the must-read books recommended by many hedge fund managers.

Exchanges is a podcast created by Goldman Sachs with over 600 episodes. In each episode, industry professionals are invited to share their insights on developments shaping industries, markets, and the global economy.

What’s next?

We are looking forward to all of the workshops we have planned in the upcoming month!