Global news and insight for corporate financial professionals
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS Government-encouraged bank mergers and bailouts are keeping global M&A; activity alive amid the financial crisis, which has severely restricted financing for corporate buyouts. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo’s $15.1 billion acquisition of Wachovia, which derailed a ...
CORPORATE DEBT Participants in the over-the-counter credit default swaps (CDS) market have sharply reduced the notional amount of CDS contracts outstanding this year through a series of portfolio compression cycles, also known as tear-ups. The notional outstanding volume ...
BEST DERIVATIVES PROVIDERS 2008 Global Finance’s fifth annual awards for the World’s Best Derivatives Providers come against a backdrop of unprecedented change in financial markets. The long bull market came to an end last year. In its place ...
GLOBAL EQUITY/DRS There were only five initial public offerings in the US market in the third quarter, with no IPO activity after early August. In Europe, withdrawn IPOs were at the highest level in the ...
GLOBAL Crunching the numbers: Businesses are preparing themselves for difficult times ahead. Much of the coverage on the credit crunch has focused on the impact it is having on banks and capital markets, but in a ...
CORPORATE DEBT Credit markets remain stalled despite heroic efforts by global central banks, regulators and governments to restore confidence in the financial system. A lack of liquidity has made issuing new high-yield bonds almost ...
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS Worldwide announced mergers and acquisitions in the first three quarters of 2008 declined by 25% from the same period a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters, reflecting the effects of the credit crunch ...
SPOTLIGHT / EMERGING MARKETS Emerging markets have been some of the best performers of recent years. Is their continued growth now under threat? Since the credit crunch began more than a year ago, it has inflicted most pain on ...
CORPORATE DEBT Less than $1 billion of US high-yield bonds were sold in August, one of the lowest monthly totals ever, as rising defaults and widening spreads above US treasury securities steered investors away from the market. Caribbean Restaurants, the ...
GLOBAL Vazza: Expects the default rate to continue growing. As private equity investors size up the new opportunities the credit crunch presents, companies in their sights might do well to consider a report published ...
GLOBAL EQUITY/DRS Hong Kong’s stock exchange has put a framework in place to begin trading depositary receipts, which will make it the only Asian exchange to allow DR issuers to target retail investors. Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKex) ...
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS Europe passed the United States in corporate dealmaking in August thanks to two large transactions, including a spin-off and a hostile bid. The total of US mergers and acquisitions for the year to date of $849 billion, ...
CORPORATE DEBT More than a year after the credit crunch burst onto the global stage, regulators and banks are still searching for a way to end the crisis, which appears to be morphing into a chronic condition. The ...
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS Midland, Michigan-based Dow Chemical forged an unusual alliance of bankers and investors to finance its $18.6 billion acquisition of specialty-chemicals maker Rohm and Haas. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and the Kuwait Investment Authority, a sovereign ...
GLOBAL EQUITY/DRS Strange as it may seem, there have been bigger initial public offerings since the credit crunch hit, but fewer of them. Global IPO activity reached an all-time high of $287 billion in proceeds in 2007 but ...
CORPORATE DEBT A consortium led by major investment banks active in the huge over-the-counter derivatives market in credit default swaps (CDS) plans to launch a central clearinghouse by September in an effort to reduce counterparty risk in the ...
GLOBAL EQUITY/DRS JPMorgan has added new depositary receipt specialists in Argentina, Brazil and Singapore to assist the growing number of companies in these countries that want to have their equity traded on exchanges outside their home markets. The ...
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS The agreement announced last month by Verizon Wireless to buy rural cell phone service provider Alltel for $5.9 billion in cash and $22.2 billion in debt did more than create the biggest mobile-phone company ...
FOCUS / CREDIT DERIVATIVES As global securitization markets continue to deteriorate, the credit derivatives space is a beacon of light in a relatively dark landscape. Long: The key is to determine which structures have been hurt which have stability. ...
GLOBAL Slim pickings: Banks are less keen on lending. As the fallout from the subprime debacle continues, companies are finding they can no longer rely on their long-standing banking providers for credit. In fact, according to a ...