Euromoney February 1999
It was a big-bang conversion with no modern precedent. Politicians had created monetary union; now it was up to banks to make it work. In Frankfurt, arguably the finance capital of euroland, the changeover was mostly a success. But there were some hairy moments and arguments over who caused a cross-border payments jam. Marcus Walker reports.
Euromoney February 1999
Banks can only sell risk if investors know exactly what they're getting. Institutions with blue-chip corporates in their loan portfolios won't have a problem, but smaller and regional banks find it almost impossible to sell their own risk in the credit derivatives market. Better credit research would help, but above all, they must learn to sell themselves. By Laura Covill.
Euromoney February 1999
It's a firm that revels in its sense of history and values its independence. What it does, it does well - clearing, mortgage bonds, niche investment banking and just a little bit of prop trading. Nick Kochan goes inside Bear Stearns and gets a verbal memo from its combative chairman "Ace" Greenberg.
Euromoney February 1999
Among the candidates to blame for starting the
emerging-markets crisis are leveraged hedge funds, foreign investorpanic, bad IMF advice, overvalued currencies and crony capitalism. A new scapegoat is the reckless Asian corporate, which overborrowed cheap dollars and expanded too fast: its bad risk management
scuppered entire economies. Isn't this latest thinking just a plot by the World Bank to impose laisser-faire capitalism on the whole world? Brian Caplen reports.
Euromoney February 1999
Highly rated borrowers fared better during last year's
crisis than lower-rated credits. But spreads on their bonds still widened sharply. The bonds that held their price best were not just those of issuers with little exposure to emerging markets but those that were most liquid. By Luciano Mondellini
Euromoney February 1999
In Turkey business patriarchs never die, they simply fade away. In the wings their sons - rarely their daughters - prepare to take over, whether they're entrepreneurially inclined or not. But family-owned business heads are increasingly realizing that survival will depend on more formal structures. A few are even putting them in place. Metin Munir reports.
Euromoney February 1999
Investors are shunning emerging markets and wary that
the US market is a bubble about to burst. With interest rates low, that makes European equities so much more attractive. But issuers know it could all go horribly wrong. They are rushing to the market before investor sentiment turns sour. And increasingly, as Antony Currie reports, the deals they want executed are block trades,
secondary offerings and equity-linked bond deals, not the
blockbuster privatizations that were once the mainstay of the market.
Euromoney February 1999
Europe's high-yield market was amongst the hardest hit by the Russian crisis. But as Rebecca Bream reports, the reasons for the market's bloom in early 1998 still hold good. Investors need greater yield and corporate restructuring is expanding the pool of potential issuers.
Euromoney February 1999
In a year in which deals of all shapes and sizes were pulled, plaudits go to all equity and bond issuers who were able to complete their deals at all. Some stars of the past - Asian project deals, Latin American corporate bonds and eastern European privatizations - barely made it to the finishing line. But one muscle-clad team of super-athletes swept the board in 1998. This was the year of the telecoms industry: from the stodgiest emerging-market monopoly to the most glamourous builder of fibre-optic networks, telecoms operators were everybody's favourite performers.