Michael Harris joined the New York Stock Exchange earlier this year as the Global Head of Capital Markets, responsible for the exchange’s work with private companies looking to publicly list on the Big Board. Harris has taken this seat at an interesting moment, with the next generation of public companies waiting, in most cases, for market volatility to abate before launching their IPOs.

This pipeline has expanded significantly, Harris explains, as more and more emerging companies reach the point where they’d like to begin the process that leads to 11 Wall Street and their lives as NYSE-listed companies.

Harris looks forward to helping them, bringing to the task a substantial resume in banking and finance. Harris joined the exchange from Citadel Securities, a market-making firm where he led capital markets and business development. Before that, he worked at banks including Morgan Stanley, UBS and J.P. Morgan. Harris also spent 3 years with the U.S. Treasury Department helping to wind down the government’s investments associated with the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Curatia had a chance to ask Harris about his background, new role and the outlook for new listings at the world’s largest stock exchange. Here are his thoughts.

First, I’m thrilled to be here at the New York Stock Exchange. In my prior role at Citadel Securities, I worked with the NYSE as one of its largest market makers, providing me with a deep understanding of the exchange and the value of its floor-based trading model.

The NYSE is a unique institution with a history dating back more than 200 years, with many of the world’s largest brands and companies listed here. From my perspective as a capital markets professional, it gives me great pleasure to be able to work with the next generation of icons and disruptors as they move along the path from the private markets to the public markets and become members of our NYSE community.

Technology is really at the heart of what the NYSE is focused on, not just for listed companies but also for other participants in the marketplace. This includes our Designated Market Makers, which provide liquidity for NYSE-listed companies, and other participants in our markets such as buyside clients.

We think of the exchange as the very best platform for liquidity for all those participants, and it’s more than simply the quality of the systems that power the NYSE. It is our unique human element, which provides a level of oversight and judgment that allows market participants to best utilize that powerful technology.

The 2008 financial crisis was one of the most challenging economic periods in our country’s history. The initial disbursements under the TARP program ranked as some of the largest government support programs ever created, totaling more than $425 billion. Fortunately, in no small part due to the hard work of the Treasury Department on behalf of the U.S. taxpayer, we were ultimately able to recover more in proceeds, exceeding $440 billion, than the amounts that were disbursed.

This was a significant achievement and I feel very honored to have had the opportunity to work with some of the best and brightest minds in winding down those investments, which played an important role in stabilizing our financial system and restarting economic growth following the financial crisis. I’d say the elements of problem solving, teamwork, and the ability to come up with solutions that are unique and challenging that were so necessary at that time are applicable to many different roles, including my current position at the NYSE.

Our focus is really very similar to what our priorities have always been. It is maintaining continuity with our listed-company community. It is also maintaining relationships with the sponsors and venture-capital investors that work with prospective clients thinking about going public. Finally, it is maintaining the communications dialogue with those companies that are in our current pipeline as they consider the process and timing around going public.

There are a few things that I think need to happen in any market environment that has seen a lot of volatility. The first thing is stability. As the markets stabilize, we’ll likely see more of an appetite by investors to put capital to work. Since IPOs tend to carry more risk for investors, the lower-risk part of the IPO asset class – the large, more established companies with predictable operational cash-flows – will likely be the first types of companies that debut. How those issuers perform, once public, will likely serve as important benchmarks for the appetite among investors and future issuers to navigate the IPO market.

I believe it’s going to be a function on the one hand of what investors think about from an interest-rate perspective but also what they are thinking about from an inflation perspective. Also, I think it will be important to see less volatility and better predictability from the equity markets, including improved perceived predictability in terms of the earnings cycle.

All that said, the IPO process for issuers requires months of planning, preparation and coordination among advisors, attorneys and exchanges like the NYSE. As a result, management teams we speak with that would like to go public continue to plan and prepare with the goal of being best positioned when the market window is available for them.

There are companies in a wide variety of industries and geographies that are looking at going public. Because there’s been such as small amount of issuance over the last several months, the pipeline of those companies interested in going public has expanded significantly.

As you look at those companies that have the greatest likelihood of going to market first, it’s likely to be those similar to Corebridge Financial, which we brought to market recently and ranks as the largest IPO of the year. It was a spinoff from AIG, an established NYSE-listed company. Generally speaking, larger-cap companies that are more liquid and have more predictable operational cash-flows are likely to attract greater investor interest at this point in the cycle because they tend to offer a lower risk profile from an IPO standpoint.

Based on our conversations, ESG is at the forefront of how most issuers think about their businesses, and a lot of that is driven by the fact that investors are focused on ESG as well. So, what we’ve done at the NYSE is provide a variety of tools and services to help issuers to achieve their own sustainability goals.

One example is our NYSE Board Advisory Council, which is designed to help identify and recruit diverse candidates who can sit on the boards of public and private companies. Recently, we also began working with Syndio to make its pay equity tools available to our listed-company community. In addition, this year we launched our NYSE Sustainability Advisory Council, which looks at best-of-breed strategies across our listed companies to benefit the entire community in developing their own strategies around sustainability.