Global Investing

Trends | Credit Ratings
More than six years after the housing market crashed—dragging the world economy and stock markets down with it—Standard & Poor’s settled in early February with the Securities and Exchange Commission for its alleged part in triggering the meltdown. The price was relatively cheap, as these things go: $1.4 billion with no admission of wrongdoing.

Management | Foreign Direct Investment
FDI volumes are declining globally, as some national governments take a stronger stance against foreign ownership of their companies and land.
 

Capital Markets | Fixed-Income Strategy
Investors lined up recently to pay for the privilege of lending money to Finland.

Capital Markets | Equity Capital Raising
Burgundy vineyard Domaine Chanzy expects to be the first company to conduct an initial public offering using crowdfunding, which enables companies to raise money from members of the public, typically via the Internet.
 

Cover Story
The decline in eurozone prices is the most dramatic example of deflationary pressures afflicting the globe. All eyes are now on European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi and his efforts to reverse that trend.

Milestones | China
New legislation will lower the regulatory hurdles for foreign companies entering the Chinese market, but it is restricted to particular industries.

Capital Markets | Stock Markets
The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) will soon have direct competition from an alternative equity-trading platform, also to be located in the heart of Toronto’s financial district, known as Bay Street.

Milestones | Venezuela
Venezuela’s introduction of a marginal free-floating currency system that will freely trade the US dollar and the bolivar seems unlikely to enlarge the country’s foreign exchange reserves or stem its growing external debt.

Capital Markets | Q&A
Axel Merk is president and chief investment officer of Merk Investments, manager of the Merk Funds.
 

Management | Shareholder Activism
A battle is heating up ahead of the DuPont’s annual shareholders meeting, planned for April.

Cover Story
As economic growth languishes and worries about the specter of deflation mount, much-needed infrastructure development and new sources of project financing could provide a panacea to global growth.
 

The largest fully nonrecourse project finance deal of 2014, in fact the largest ever, was the expansion of a liquefied nitrogen gas (LNG) facility near Freeport in Texas. 

Presenting the World’s Best Trade & Supply Chain Finance Awards for 2015.

Management | Corporate Cash
The partial revival seen recently in capital investment by companies reflects the mixed performance of the global economy and the outlook for it.

Market Report | Equity Derivatives
With volatility rising from historic lows on the equity derivatives market, investment banks are finding renewed interest from clients among nonfinancial corporations.

Country Report | Mozambique
Mozambique is the current star in Africa’s rising inward-investment constellation. For much of the last quarter of the 20th century, Mozambique was a war zone. Today the only war on its horizon is a bidder’s war, as investors salivate over the opportunities this Southern African country offers.

Global Finance sat down with Arvind Rajan, International Chief Investment Officer at Prudential Fixed Income, to discuss the impact of low oil prices on the ability of emerging markets to service their debt.

FDI Update
After four years of challenges in the social, economic and political space, Egypt rolls out the welcome mat for foreign direct investors.

Cover Story
The drastic drop in oil prices will clearly have an impact on both individual companies and on overall growth in some countries. But is the shift net positive or negative, cyclical or systemic? The ultimate outcome is yet to be seen.

Activist Investing | Trends
Vanguard CEO William McNabb is making it plain that he wants the many public companies in which the world’s second-largest fund management firm owns significant minority stakes to take Vanguard as seriously as they take activist investors.