On 8 October 2019, HKEX quietly dropped its US$36 billion-plus bid for the London Stock Exchange, citing its disappointment that, “it had been unable to engage” with the management of the latter “in realising its vision to create a world-leading market infrastructure group”. read
Amid drone attacks on Saudi Aramco’s production facilities, news that both the London and Hong Kong stock exchanges were unlikely to be in the running for the international portion of the company’s flotation came as no surprise. read
Yesterday was only the second time since 1967 that there was a general strike in Hong Kong – and the very first time under Chinese rule. read
Last week, news that Deutsche Bank would fold its global equities business and terminate almost 20,000 of its employees came as a shock for market observers. read
Last week, Slack Technologies Inc., a San Francisco-based software company which designs and develops real-time messaging for businesses, listed on the New York Stock Exchange in an offering that valued it at about US$24 billion. read
The last few months saw two major investment banks, Deutsche Bank and my erstwhile employer Nomura, faced with increasing difficulties, and actively engaging in paring much of their businesses amid mounting losses. read
Just as Hong Kong has taken over from Japan as the second largest stock exchange in Asia (behind Shanghai), and as larger and better performing IPOs show renewed confidence on the part of investors in the city, Singapore’s primary markets have quietly (and rather worryingly) gone off the grid.
HKEX just released its strategic plan for the next three years, painting itself as the “global markets leader in the Asian time zone”. read
I turn my attention to one of the ECM world’s best-guarded secrets: the profits banks can make from stabilisation.
What once looked like a healthy and steady pipeline of IPOs across Europe and the US has evaporated in a flash. read
