The volume of new yen-denominated bond issues has grown dramatically in recent months. A high rate of yen issuance, both by foreign borrowers in the Japanese domestic market and through issues in the Eurobond and global bond markets may become an established feature.
| Prasad: "yen market will continue to grow" | ||||||
Euroyen new issues in the First half of this year were worth ¥6,618 billion ($61 billion), compared with ¥2,590 billion for the whole of 1999. The samurai primary market for this year is, at ¥1,390 billion, already more than twice the size of the ¥660-billion new issue market of 1999.
Veteran bankers can't help being reminded of previous short-lived bursts of activity. Volumes rose dramatically in the mid-1990s, when European sovereigns were big issuers of yen bonds. This boom was abruptly stopped by the Asian crisis in 1997, and in 1998 non-Japanese issuers raised just ¥1.8