Equity underwriters are looking ahead to the final months of this year with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Rarely have there been so many deals looking to be done in such a short time. According to Salomon Smith Barney's calculations, by early September $48 billion of deals had been announced that issuers were hoping to complete by the end of the year. And that figure included only European issuers. The true volume of deals hanging over the markets will be quite a bit larger, including several billion dollars worth from Asia and other deals from Europe and elsewhere that are being worked on behind the scenes.
After a busy second quarter, with equity issuance in June alone at more than $30 billion, 1999 has already been a bumper year for supply of new equity. By the beginning of last month, according to Salomon Smith Barney, $82 billion of new European equity had been issued in 1999, just below the figure for the whole of 1998 and not far off the $101 billion brought to market in 1997.
However, in spite of the robust volumes, equity capital markets teams have not found life easy in 1999.