Search results for

As bankers work feverishly to complete mandated China and Hong Kong IPOs before the final window shuts ahead of the Christmas break, there are hints of investor indigestion.

CLSA and Asian Corporate Governance Association (ACGA) published their annual corporate governance rankings this year entitled “The Holy Grail”. The research, pored over by zealous regulators eager to pat themselves on the back, scores Asian markets on various issues affecting corporate governance, including regulation, enforcement and even “culture” (see table). Most notable this year is Taiwan’s jump up the table and Korea’s slide down it.

“It’s nearly impossible to say which one you would choose when they go head to head in a pitch for passive mandates. They’re 10-ton gorillas that joust at the top.”

The exchange traded fund market is an area in which Barclays Global Investors can lay solid claim to being more successful than State Street Global Advisers. BGI has built up its ETF business (iShares) in five years to a level of $178 billion, compared with SSgA’s $80 billion.

General Electric’s consumer finance division is entering agent banking, hoping to get business from retail banks seeking to outsource their credit card businesses. Industry commentators believe the move could bring GE $250 million of additional profit over the next five years.

Fast food chain McDonald’s has come under pressure from an activist hedge fund to restructure. Pershing Square Capital Management wants the company to spin off two-thirds of its restaurants and borrow $14.7 billion against its real estate to buy back shares. McDonald’s dismissed the idea as a “financial engineering exercise”.

As banks get ready to divide up their bonus pool in December or early January, some fixed income traders had better get ready to be disappointed.

A spate of poor deals gets the investment bankers thinking. After a difficult October, in which initial public offerings met with a variety of fates, attention last month swung once again to the IPO process itself.

Recognition and protection of shareholders’ rights has rarely been a top priority for senior management of emerging-market corporates. The lack of any serious attention to shareholder rights in China is further hindered by an alphabet soup mix of shareholder classes – each with its own complex set of regulations. Although many emerging equity markets operate under foreign ownership restrictions and two-tiered share ownership structures, the Chinese system is perhaps the most elaborate. More important, proposals to attempt radical reform of the regulatory framework – such as the elimination of an entire class of shares – might hit foreign equity holders with an immediate loss, thus injecting into the market even more uncertainty about the near-term outlook for increased foreign participation. Here are some of the most commonly used market terms.

Cantor Fitzgerald offshoot BGC is being coy about the apparent closure of its spot FX broking business.

It may not be the sort of lead arranging mandate Deutsche Bank normally undertakes, but it’s for a very good cause.

GSAM's boutique structure provides a potential model for other asset managers.