New Company in Deutsche Börse’s REITs Segment
Hamborner REIT AG is third German company included
February 22, 2010-- Following its successful conversion, Hamborner REIT AG became the next company to be accepted into Deutsche Börse’s REITs segment on Monday. REITs, or real estate investment trusts, are exchange-listed stock corporations that generate the majority of their revenue from managing real estate, and are subject to certain structural and tax conditions.
Hamborner REIT AG is the first German REIT not to be newly founded; it has been a listed company since 1953. The company has become the third German REIT. A total of around 160 companies are traded in Deutsche Börse’s REITs segment, of which 117 are from the US, and others from Japan, France, Hong Kong and the UK.
Deutsche Börse established the REITs segment in November 2007 for this asset class. This enables investors and analysts to easily identify REITs for targeted investment in listed companies with REIT status, while offering a high degree of transparency. REITs can be listed on the EU-regulated market in the General Standard and Prime Standard, as well as in the exchange-regulated market on the open market and in Entry Standard.
Deutsche Börse calculates independent REIT indices on the basis of segment membership; the All Share index covers all REITs on the Prime Standard and General Standard, and is accessible for both German and foreign REITs. The REIT “RX” selection index contains the 20 largest and most liquid REITs from the Prime Standard.
Source: Deutsche Börse
Austria set to impose US-style bank tax
February 22, 2010--Austria plans to introduce a tax on banks, similar to a highly disputed scheme in the United States, in a bid to fix broken public finances, Chancellor Werner Faymann said Monday.
"We are going to introduce a bank levy," Faymann told a joint news conference with his Vice Chancellor Josef Proell and Austrian central bank chief Ewald Nowotny.
Faymann's idea of charging banks 0.7-1.0 percent of their total assets as a "solidarity levy" -- along the same lines as a proposal by US President Barack Obama -- has run into fierce opposition in the financial sector.
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Source: EU Business
Capital market to see recovery in 2010, survey finds
February 19, 2010--Turkish capital markets will enjoy a recovery in 2010 as compared to a year before, a recent survey by the Capital Markets Board (SPK) has found.
The SPK released the results of its capital markets expectations survey on Friday, which was conducted in January and points to a “no change” in the market in February as compared to a month before. The SPK launched a pilot for the expectation survey in November of last year, and this is the first time the board has publicly shared the results of its findings. The SPK announced in a written statement that they would conduct the survey and release the results monthly from now on.
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Source: Todays Zaman
Sterling looks vulnerable as it loses ground to fragile peers
February 19, 2010--For all the focus on the euro and Greece’s budget woes, sterling is sinking stealthily into a crisis of its own.
Although the pound joined the rally against the single currency in January, rising 2.3 per cent, sentiment has turned against sterling this month.
Even as developments in Greece prompted some investors to question the very existence of the euro, the pound has managed to drop 1 per cent against the single currency so far this month.
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Source: FT.com
EU bids to boost bank deposit guarantees
February 19, 2010--European regulators want banks to increase guarantees on depositor funds in a bid to avoid a repeat of the acrimony pitting EU hopeful Iceland against Britain and the Netherlands, the European Commission said Friday.
The commission is planning "to improve the financing of deposit guarantee schemes ... basically, the way the banks pay contributions to these schemes," said a spokeswoman for Financial Services Commissioner Michel Barnier.
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Source: EU Business
ECB Monthly Bulletin-February 2010
February 19, 2010--The February 2010 Monthly Bulletin of the ECB is now available.
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Source: European Central Bank (ECB)
José Manuel González-Páramo: Globalisation, international financial integration and the financial crisis: The future of European and international financial market regulation and supervision
February 19, 2010--Speech by José Manuel González-Páramo, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB
Institute of International and European Affairs,
Dublin 19 February 2010
Introduction [1]
I would like to thank the Institute of International and European Affairs for organising this conference and for giving me the opportunity to speak in front of such a distinguished audience. I am particularly glad to be able to participate in the Institute’s series of speeches dedicated to the theme of “Fixing finance”.
Following the nature and objective of the series, I will dedicate part of my address to the issue of the future framework for European and international financial market supervision and, in particular, to the role of the ECB in macroprudential supervision in the European Union, but first let me briefly discuss the relationship between international financial integration and the financial crisis.
International financial integration and the financial crisis
Over the past decade or so, financial crises seem to have become more frequent and perhaps more disruptive than in the past. They also seem to propagate more rapidly. This experience has spurred intense interest among academics and policy-makers in understanding the link between financial integration and crises, and in better assessing the merits of financial integration in general.
The debate on the benefits of international financial integration is certainly not uncontroversial:
One extreme opinion sustains that integrated financial systems improve the allocation of productive resources, foster entrepreneurship and innovation, enhance market discipline, and help countries to insure against macroeconomic fluctuations.
At the other extreme, it is argued that the free flow of capital widens the wealth gap between rich and poor countries and exposes domestic financial systems to the risk of instability. [2]
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Source: European Central bank (ECB)
Britain's Debt Set to Be Higher Than That of Greece
February 19, 2010--Britain's public finances may end this year in a worse state than those of Greece, economists warned yesterday, raising serious fears over the economic stability of the country.
In surprise news which sent the pound sliding, official figures showed that the Government borrowed £4.3 billion last month.
It was the first time since 1993 that the public finances had gone into the red in January – a month in which tax revenues usually push the Exchequer into the black.
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Source: Daily Telegraph
DB Index Research -- Weekly ETF Reports - Europe
February 18, 2010--Highlights
ETF Volume
Exchange based Equity ETF turnover rose by 19.9% on the previous week. Daily turnover for the previous week was E1.7bn. European fixed income ETF turnover rose by 1.9% to E269.7m.
In exchange based bond ETFs, db x-trackers US Dollar Money Market ETF has the highest daily turnover of E30.95m. Among the Equity ETFs, iShares DAX (DE) has the highest daily turnover of E85.99m.
There was one new listing last week. Osmosis Fund plc issued one new ETF on London Stock Exchange.
Style ETFs rose to the top position as leading product area with total turnover of E488m with 29.20% of total ETF turnover followed by European Regional ETFs with total turnover of E482m accounting for 28.87% of total ETF turnover. The DAX ETFs remain the dominant country products with total average daily volume of E193m across the fourteen listed products and accounting for 11.6% of all equity ETF volume.
DJ Euro STOXX 50 ETFs accounted for 15.6% of turnover trading E261m per day with liquidity split across 17 ETFs and 44 different listings on 9 exchanges.
Market Share
The Deutsche Borse XTF platform has the largest market share with 37.1% of total turnover. The Euronext NextTrack platform has 19.0% market share. The LSE’s combined Italian Exchange and London market share is now 20.8%.
Assets under Management (AUM)
Total European Equity related AUM remained at about the same level at E110.7bn during last week. AUM for DJ Euro STOXX 50 ETFs was E20.8bn accounting for 18.8% of total European AUM. Fixed Income ETF AUM remained at about the same level at E36.6bn.
Overall, the largest ETF by AUM was Lyxor ETF DJ Euro STOXX 50, an Equity based ETF, with AUM of E5.0bn. The largest Fixed Income ETF by AUM was the iShares € Corporate Bond with AUM of E3.2bn.
To request a copy of the report
Source: Aram Flores and Shan Lan -DB Index Research
AKA calls for legal certainty in German provincial pensions
February 19, 2010--A key figure at the German association of local and church pension schemes (AKA) has claimed postponing funded pension schemes because of the financial crisis could be detrimental to trust in the pensions system. A number of German provinces have set up funded pensions systems over recent years.
But over recent months, the German province of Niedersachsen has halted plans to create a pension fund for civil servants while Bavarian officials have frozen payments to a similar vehicle. (See earlier IPE stories: Brandenburg starts to fund pension and Bavaria freezes contribution to public pension fund)
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Source: IP&E
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