Euromoney polled heads of Eurobond and government bond trading, asking them to nominate the top three houses at trading bonds in specific markets. This year, the survey was revised to reflect the recent structural changes on many bond trading desks. We received 52 replies in total.
In the overall tables, the following weightings were applied to banks' scores to reflect the variation in size and importance of the various markets.
Eurobonds: weighted by volume of outstanding Eurobonds in each currency at the end of the first quarter this year (source: Capital Data Bondware). The second weighting takes into account secondary market turnover as reported by Euroclear for January and February 2000.
Government bonds: weighted by the Salomon Smith Barney World Government Bond Index at the end of March.
In the subsequent breakdown of bond markets, scores were awarded on a sliding scale of 4:3:2 and were not weighted according to turnover or volume.
Respondents were requested not to nominate their own institutions. Banks that declined to participate, thereby denying credit to competitors, had their scores reduced by 10% in each category.