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Banks are expanding their presence in energy trading – again. But with two established incumbents, is there enough profitable business for the newcomers? Kathryn Tully reports.

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.

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

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

Modest though it might appear, China's first fully-fledged buyout of a state-owned enterprise is significant.

Help could be at hand for market makers in jumbo Pfandbriefe that want to hedge spread movements between different issuers.

From an asset class perspective, the CDO sector dominates the pipeline and within that sector CLO issuance is at the vanguard.

Bond returns have come closer to matching equity returns over the past 25 years, according to Deutsche Bank. European credit strategists Gary Jenkins and Jim Reid looked at more than a century’s worth of data from the US. They found that, over a 105-year sample, equities produced a real total annual return of 6.53%, compared with 1.42% for US Treasuries and 2.5% for corporate bonds. But since 1980, equities outperformed corporates by just 1.5 percentage points.

Until recently only multilaterals with a regional mandate, such as the ADB and IFC, have shown much interest in issuing bonds in Asian currencies. But KfW is planning a three-pronged attack on local-currency issuance in 2006. So are local markets about to take off?

Australia’s new-issue market heated up this month with the announcement of three large IPOs. Goodman Fielder, a leading Australian foods business, controlled by New Zealand entrepreneur Graeme Hart, intends to raise about A$2 billion ($1.48 billion) from a listing in Australia and New Zealand. Singapore Power’s holding company for its Australian electricity assets, SP AusNet, has also filed a prospectus for a simultaneous IPO in Australia and Singapore that is expected to raise approximately A$1.6 billion. Another electricity asset, Spark Infrastructure, filed in November for an IPO that aims to raise A$1.8 billion to fund the acquisition of minority interests in Australian power assets held by Hong Kong’s Cheung Kong Infrastructure.

Further proof that FX has gone mainstream comes with news that Rydex Investments has filed a registration statement with the SEC to launch a currency exchange-traded fund (ETF). When approved, the new ETF, which is based on the level of the euro against the dollar, will trade as a stock on the New York Stock Exchange.

Middle Eastern private investment and advisory firm Injazat Capital is launching a $100 million Islamic-compliant healthcare fund this month.