Search results for

The Austrian powerhouses continue to make considerable investments in the region. Salomon Smith Barney is the most successful M&A house. Simon Brady, David Shirreff

Who could have dreamt that Korean online trading, almost non-existent two years ago, could be almost as large as that of the US?" So asked Andrew Sheng, chairman of Hong Kong's Securities&Futures Commission (SFC) in an address to the local Securities Institute delivered earlier this spring. Although online trading is gathering momentum across Asia, the speed with which it has been embraced by Korean investors has been staggering. As a report published on Korea's "internet laboratory" by Lehman Brothers early in March commented: "Over just a one-year period, online trading has grown from 4% of market turnover to 45%. Twenty-nine out of 31 domestic brokers now offer online broking services, and two million Korean investors have gone online."

Indian IT companies, eager to become global players, have no patience for the exchange control rules they face. But Indian officials and regulators are stuck in an era where capital was scarce and controls were needed to fence it in. It is a clash of two mindsets.

The proposed merger between the Deutsche Börse and the London Stock Exchange (LSE) is meant to reduce transaction costs and consolidate the fragmented European market for equities. This rather lopsided plan has to win the vote of all interested parties and many political obstacles stand in its way. Even if it falls through, the LSE is now in play and should make sure it sells out to the highest bidder.

The nature of sovereign debt reschedulings is changing as private sector bail-ins of diverse groups of bondholders replace the Brady-style deals that used to be negotiated between borrowers and tight groups of creditors. Lawyers have their work cut out.

Remember the "vanguard of the proletariat" - that Marxist/Leninist menace. It turns out that the vanguard part is alive, well and very successfully managing about $550 billion in mutual fund assets from a suburb of Philadelphia. The Vanguard Group is America's second largest mutual fund complex. Almost half of its assets are in various index funds.

What are the biggest challenges to Pakistan's economic managers?

What is your mission at the finance ministry?

My name is Leon and I am going to London". It may have surprised Leon but all 357 people on board the Heathrow-bound plane from Johannesburg were going to London. Right plane, wrong seat. Leon was going to sit next to me. He filled the chair comfortably. So much so that the occupants on either side of him braced themselves for the battle of the bulge.

Something has to give. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - America's colossal home mortgage securitizers - have been growing at about 11.5% per year. That's much faster than the market they serve: the underlying market for home mortgages in America is growing at only about 6% per year.

Eiichi Tanabe, acting general manager of Mitsubishi Corporation's finance department, declares that the trading company has not accessed the Eurobond markets since 1989 when it issued $1.5 billion of bonds with warrants. It is something of a trick answer - technically correct because the corporation itself has stayed away, but its London financial offshoot and other subsidiaries have remained active, with Mitsubishi Corporation Finance in London having a $12 billion programme of medium-term notes and Eurocommercial paper.