Gordon Platt

Global Finance selects the winners in a specialized area of finance—one that is often hidden to end-users of custody services. Sub-custodians form the bedrock of the custody business. They hold and process securities on behalf of other custodians and possess ...

EUROPE Six Continents’ Split-Up Creates Two New ADRs Two new American depositary receipt programs were created in April as a result of the separation of Six Continents, the world’s largest hotel group, into two companies. Bank of New York was ...

United states “The Tax Meagiure could attract $300 billion back into the US economy” 23 Wall Street in 1914 … When the Morgan bank building was completed in 1914 at the southeast corner of Wall Street and Broad Street, it ...

The separation of hotel brands and ownership of properties is enabling the lodging industry to entice investors to cough up money for expansion and development. Tough economic times have spawned a fundamental change in the way the hotel industry operates. ...

THE AMERICAS The US dollar plummeted to a four-year low against the euro in early May, giving foreign investors little incentive to chase paltry US returns on investments that could be further eroded by a declining greenback, analysts say. “The ...

ASIA Hong Kong’s budget deficit keeps getting bigger, while deflation has been consistently underestimated, analysts say. The special administrative region’s fiscal reserves have fallen by 30% from their peak in 2001 and are likely to drop another 15% in 2003, ...

RUSSIA Beating covetous Western oil interests to the prize, Russia’s largest oil company, Yukos, agreed to buy Sibneft, another major Russian oil firm, creating what participants say will be the world’s fourth-largest private oil producer. The new company, YukosSibneft Oil, ...

THE AMERICAS US corporate bonds extended their bull-market run to a sixth consecutive month in April, with highyielding issues leading the advance. Corporate spreads tightened by 30 basis points versus US Treasury securities during the month, according to Wei Wang, ...

EUROPE The ruble crisis seems like a distant memory. In August 1998, the Russian central bank threw in the towel.With the ruble under severe downward pressure, the central bank suspended trading of rubles for US dollars to conserve the country’s ...

UNITED STATES/UNITED KINGDOM “Access to Bloomberg’s 170,000 desk-top machines will dramatically increase our reach.” —Bill Moran, EBS Bill Moran EBS, the global bank partnership that handles $90 billion a day in spot foreign exchange trades,wants to expand beyond the inter-bank ...

THE AMERICAS While war news out of Iraq was the main determinant of currency movements in April, the US dollar could resume falling once the focus of market participants inevitably returns to economic fundamentals, analysts say. “The dollar is in ...

A volatile economy shows a bit of pace as exports grow and politics remains calm. International banks are gradually reopening Brazilian trade-finance facilities that were largely shuttered last year, following the Argentine financial crisis and during a nerve-racking run-up to ...

THE AMERICAS Mutual funds that invest in high-yield bonds returned 5.4% on average in the first quarter of 2003, continuing a winning streak that began late last year, according to New Yorkbased Standard & Poor’s. “Junk bonds have been helped ...

EUROPE UK-based 3DM Worldwide, which develops patents for the plastics industry and manages businesses in the Kyrgyz Republic, issued American depositary receipts in the over-the-counter market. The company’s US subsidiary, Detroit, Michiganbased 3DM Technologies, had proposed seeking a listing on ...

EUROPE Gas Natural, Spain’s biggest gas distributor, made a hostile bid for the country’s largest electric utility, Iberdrola, but the future of the proposed $30 billion deal remains highly uncertain. Hostile bids are frowned upon in Spain, and have seldom ...

Global Finance selects the world’s best. The real-time global settlement process took a major leap forward in September 2002, when the CLS Bank went live, netting positions in a five-hour window in each 24-hour period. CLS, or continuous linked settlement, ...

THE AMERICAS A surge in new issuance of high-yield bonds in the US market is being met by strong demand. Even Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, is buying. High-yield bond issuance in February surged to $8.75 billion, according to ...

UNITED STATES No one can accuse Representative Michael Oxley, the Ohio Republican of Sarbanes- Oxley fame, of shunning the media spotlight.The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee was back in the headlines in March, when he turned his fire ...

SOUTH AFRICA Telkom, South Africa’s state-controlled telephone and wireless operator, listed its shares on the Johannesburg and New York stock exchanges on March 4. The long-delayed partial privatization included an unusual pricing scheme. Members of a group of South Africans ...

THE AMERICAS Devon Energy Moves Into Deeper Water Oklahoma City, Okla-homa-based Devon Energy agreed to merge with Ocean Energy of Houston,Texas, in a $5 billion stock-swap trans-action.As a result, Devon Energy will become the largest US-based indepen-dent oil and natural ...

THE AMERICAS Canadian Dollar Turns Suddenly Popular Rising interest rates, solid economic growth, a big trade surplus and strong commodity prices pro-pelled the Canadian dollar sharply higher in March. Why did the long-hapless loonie, as the Canadian cur-rency is known, ...

UNITED STATES “Mandatory expensing—using flawed valuation models—will lead to inaccurate and misleading information for investors.” —Ken Wasch, SIIA The norwalk, Connecticut- based Financial Accounting Standards Board agreed unanimously at its meeting in March to add to its agenda the controversial ...

Currency Traders Expect China To Revalue Yuan ASIA Participants in the foreign exchange market have caught a whiff of possible changes afoot in China’s tightly controlled currency regime. For the first time in many years, long-term forward currency contracts are ...

Global Finance selects the leaders in the $1.25 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market. The foreign exchange market, with daily turnover of $1.25 trillion, remains the world’s biggest financial market, even though trading has dwindled somewhat following the introduction of the euro. ...

THE AMERICAS Emerging Markets Fund Leads BLDRS Volume The baskets of listed depositary receipts, or BLDRS, a family of four exchange-traded funds launched on the Nasdaq Stock Market in November 2002, are gradually gaining investor acceptance, if trading volume is ...

EUROPE William Morrison Supermarkets touched off a bidding war for rival British supermarket chain Safeway with an offer valued at $6.7 billion in stock and debt. The Safeway board withdrew its recommendation that shareholders accept the offer after Britain’s top ...

THE AMERICAS The US corporate bond market rallied strongly in the early weeks of 2003, with lower-rated bonds outperforming higherrated issues. As cash positions remain plentiful, interest rates are holding at historic lows, and spreads of corporate bonds to Treasury ...

The financial services industry enhances its role as trusted intermediary by taking the risk out of international transactions As the locomotive of the global economy, the United States faces considerable uncertainty about potential conflict in Iraq and the threat that ...

EUROPE For the first time in 11 years, the value of European corporate takeovers in 2002 was greater than the value of US takeovers. Crédit Agricole’s $16.8 billion agreement to acquire Crédit Lyonnais pushed Europe over the top in December, ...

THE AMERICAS The US dollar fell 9.2% on a trade-weighted basis in 2002, and analysts predict further losses for the greenback this year, particularly against the euro. Fears of a plunge in the dollar are overdone,however, despite the potential for ...

The innovative exchange is seeking a patent for a “black box” that will power the next new product line: actively managed funds that trade like stocks The stock ticker at the American Stock Exchange in New York these days displays ...

THE AMERICAS Trading of American depositary receipts rose 6.8% in volume terms in 2002 to 28 billion shares, according to New Yorkbased Citibank Depositary Receipt Services. Overall trading volume continued to rise, particularly for Asian issuers, indicating investors’ ongoing interest ...

THE AMERICAS US corporate bond issuance in 2002 fell 28% to $465 billion, according to analysts at Dealogic in New York. The largest investmentgrade issue was General Electric Capital’s $6.9 billion, two-part offering on March 13 2002, which comprised $2 ...

UNITED STATES Some Wall Street executives retire to play golf and spend more time with their families. Barton Biggs, 70, Morgan Stanley’s chief global strategist, is “retiring” later this year after 30 years with the investment bank to lead a ...

UNITED STATES COCA-COLA PUTS THE LID ON EARNINGS GUIDANCE We are quite comfortable measuring our progress as we achieve it.” —Douglas Daft, chairman and CEO, Coca-Cola Daft:Will let figures speak Athanta-based Coca-Cola,the world’s largest soft-drinks company,says it will no longer ...

ASIA China Telecom Issue Poorly Received in US China Telecom slashed the size of its initial public offering by more than half in the face of weak investor demand, but the IPO was still the fifth-largest new issue of 2002. ...

THE AMERICAS US Economic Recovery May Not Boost Dollar The US dollar will not realize any benefit from expected stronger growth in the US economy this year if the recovery is accompanied by a continued widening in the trade deficit, ...

THE AMERICAS Sudden Rally Erases High-Yield Losses The sun came out in the high-yield corporate bond market in November, narrowing spreads to treasury securities with record speed and eliminating most of the market’s steep losses for the first 10 months ...

THE AMERICAS HSBC Extends Reach Among US Consumers HSBC Holding agreed to buy Household Interna-tional, the largest indepen-dent consumer finance company in the United States, in a stock-swap transaction valued at $15.3 billion, extending the bank’s relationship to one in ...

Japanese Bank Failure? Might a large Japanese bank fail in 2003? Quite possibly, say analysts, who point out that the government will be forced to step in to prevent a system- wide crisis of confidence. Pain is spread across a ...