Venturing off the radar
"THE CENTRE OF gravity of the global financial markets has shifted to Asia," says the head of investment banking for the region at a top US bank over breakfast in Hong Kong. Although capital markets activity has slowed in Asia as a result of investor and issuer caution about events in the US, eastern markets are not as paralysed by a lack of liquidity as those in the west. There’s money to be put to work; the owners of that capital have just become a little more cautious as to how it should be deployed.
While the closing months of 2007 brought seemingly constant reports of losses at big banks and tightening of credit lines in western markets, in Asia China remained buoyant, sovereign funds and unharmed banks invested billions of dollars in wounded foreign institutions and deals kept closing. The leveraged buyout market...
