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Happy New Year to all of our readers! As the New Year begins in Asia’s capital markets, we hope you will take the time to look back to 2011 — and help us find out the best deals, banks and borrowers of the year. Read on for more.
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The dawn of 2012 brings new hope — and new fears. The sense of foreboding in financial markets is pervasive, but sentiment is self-fulfilling. Investors, bankers and funding officials alike must approach the year with determination and calmness, or the troubles besetting markets will only get worse. There are many good reasons to feel confident, as well as to worry. EuroWeek highlights five of each.
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Forget the Mayan predictions, 2012 is not going to be the end of the world. Asian investors in particular have a lot to be optimistic about. But as the Asia Pacific region adjusts to changing economic conditions in other parts of the world, bond investors and issuers alike will have to change too.
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The EFSF is the right borrower to bring the first SSA trade of the year. But anything less than a smooth print this week for the bail-out fund will be a missed opportunity to set much needed calm market conditions for the rest of the month and possibly even, rest of the year.
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The ECB is going to be the only bank that grows this year. It therefore needs to start acting like one. That means getting its vast warehouse of repo collateral back out to a market that desperately needs it.
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Investment bankers at RBS might once have been able to argue that building a global investment bank was the best deal for taxpayers. Not any more. In the current climate, ditching that ambition is the right thing to do.
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The Basel Committee is right to warn local regulators about capital relief deals that seek to game the system. But more transparency in the market would be a big step towards safety, without restricting legitimate risk transfer.
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The ring-fencing of investment banks from retail lenders is a pivotal moment for the UK’s financial services industry. The measures will help appease the public, but unless investors and issuers are given certainty about how bail-in will be implemented, funding markets will remain closed.
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US private placements are thriving. Combining many virtues of bond buyers and banks, the investors will listen to credit stories the mainstream market won’t touch. If only some of this common sense would rub off on the public bond market.
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—The Swiss Structured Product Association gives its response to the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority’s criticism that current regulation does not protect structured product investors in Switzerland.
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It has been a difficult end to the year for Asian capital markets bankers, but they can look forward to buoyant market conditions over the next few years. Global banks will continue their scramble for Asian business, so it is high time that local banks strengthened their own teams.