Surprise, surprise. Riyadh appears to have lost its bet to successfully bring to market a US$100 billion-plus IPO for Saudi Aramco. read

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

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.

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HKEX just released its strategic plan for the next three years, painting itself as the “global markets leader in the Asian time zone”. read