New Year gets off to a fiery start

TRY TO BLAME the poor performance of a capital markets deal on the conjunction of phases of the moon and the path of the sun and you'll probably be given short shrift. But lunar and solar behaviour have a huge bearing on sentiment in the debt capital markets at the beginning of every year because they are used to calculate the date of the Chinese New Year.

In 2004, Chinese New Year fell on January 22. That closed the Asian markets at the end of the month and meant that some large agency borrowers had to do quick deals in the first two weeks of January. European Investment Bank and KfW's $3 billion five-year deals, while successful, weren't the blowouts that some had expected.

Chinese New Year this year falls on February 9. "There's less time pressure on issuers because of a later Chinese New Year," says Catriona Brown, head...