At the risk of stepping in front of the speeding train that is Hank Paulson's regulatory rollback effort, may I point out that the whole argument for the Capital Market Plan he launched this morning was looking kind of shaky by this afternoon?
As we reported earlier today, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association just announced that the apparently sickly U.S. capital markets saw a 13 percent increase in issuance of new securities the first quarter..
Total equity underwriting jumped 42.6 percent year-on-year, to $61.4 billion, on 202 deals. That's a slight decline in value from the previous quarter, but the first time $60 billion of equity was raised in consecutive quarters in nearly seven years, according to SIFMA.
Meanwhile, PricewaterhouseCoopers reports that US IPO activity during the traditionally quiet first quarter hit a seven-year high in terms of both volume and proceeds, with $12.1 billion raised through 64 IPOs, up from $11.6 billion from 54 IPOs in Q1 2006.
Yes, deal size is down slightly —, averaging $190 million instead of $216 million — but given all the comparisons floated around the press that speciously suggest London's AIM is somehow stealing business from the NYSE and Nasdaq, that shows that smaller IPOs are actually also doing fine in the U.S.
Indeed, says PwC, although London remains Europe's premier IPO market with 43 percent of IPO volume and 81 percent of value, these numbers represent a sharp drop in volume and a slight decline in value compared with Q1 2006.
Oh, and by the way, here's why: "London's decline is attributable to less activity on the AIM."
Oh dear. Seems London's global competitiveness must be suffering from too many principles.
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