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NASDAQ OMX Announces First Quarter 2010 New Listings Statistics
NASDAQ Captured 41 New Listings, Including 15 IPOs
April 26, 2010--The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:NDAQ) today announced that The NASDAQ Stock Market® (NASDAQ®) captured a total of 41 new listings in the first quarter of 2010, highlighted by a promising IPO market which brought 15 new companies to NASDAQ.
The two largest domestic technology IPOs of the quarter chose to list on NASDAQ. SS&C Technologies (Nasdaq:SSNC), a leading provider of financial management software, and QuinStreet (Nasdaq:QNST), a leader in vertical marketing and media on the Internet, raised $160 million and $150 million, respectively. NASDAQ continues to be the leading exchange for technology companies and is home to over 80% of the technology companies listed on a U.S. national exchange.
Another positive sign for the market was the pricing of 3 biotechnology IPOs, all of which decided to list their shares on NASDAQ. Those companies included Ironwood Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:IRWD), AVEO Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:AVEO) and Anthera Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:ANTH).
Other notable domestic IPOs included Financial Engines (Nasdaq:FNGN), Meru Networks (Nasdaq:MERU) and First Interstate BancSystem (Nasdaq:FIBK). Also during the quarter, the shares of Madison Square Garden (Nasdaq:MSG) began trading on NASDAQ after the company's spin-off from Cablevision Systems (NYSE:CVC). In addition, Verizon Communications (Nasdaq:VZ) (NYSE:VZ) dual listed their shares on NASDAQ while Coffee Holding Co. (Nasdaq:JVA) celebrated their switch from NYSE Amex.
Insurers hit at global financial tax plan
April 26, 2010--The world’s 80 largest insurance groups have written to the G20 group of nations to protest at their industry’s inclusion in proposals for a global financial services tax, saying it is unfair and would have an adverse effect on consumers.
The Geneva Association, a global lobby group for the biggest insurers, describes the application of the tax proposal from the International Monetary Fund to insurers as “inappropriate and arbitrary” and says it could increase insurance costs and reduce the amount of insurance available.
Nations disagree over IMF bank taxes
April 23, 2010--The world’s leading economies on Friday agreed to disagree for the moment on contentious plans to tax banks to fund future financial rescues.
The proposal for a levy on banks’ balance sheets and profits was high on the agenda of the G20 grouping of nations after recommendations in a feasibility report by the International Monetary Fund released earlier this week.
Derivatives dealers voice support for clearing
April 23, 2010--The amount of derivatives being centrally cleared can “easily double” in the next two years, according to industry representatives, who also said that the industry is fully behind the move.
The remarks come as financial institutions are focused on Washington negotiations aimed at producing final agreement on a new regulatory framework with enormous consequences for the industry, in which most trades are conducted bilaterally, or “over the counter “, without a central clearer.
Credit supply - Identifying balance-sheet channels with loan applications and granted loans -Working paper
April 23, 2010--Abstract:
This paper uses a factor-augmented vector autoregressive model (FAVAR) estimated on U.S. data in order to analyze monetary transmission via private sector balance sheets, credit risk spreads and asset markets in an integrated setup and to explore the
role of monetary policy in the three imbalances that were observed prior to the global financial crisis: high house price inflation, strong private debt growth and low credit risk spreads.
The results suggest that (i) monetary policy shocks have a highly
significant and persistent effect on house prices, real estate wealth and private sector
debt as well as a strong short-lived effect on risk spreads in the money and mortgage
markets; (ii) monetary policy shocks have contributed discernibly, but at a late stage
to the unsustainable developments in house and credit markets that were observable between 2001 and 2006; (iii) financial shocks have influenced the path of policy rates prior to the crisis, and the feedback effects of financial shocks via lower policy rates
BlackRock May Top $200 Billion in Annual Inflows, Kapito Says
April 22, 2010--BlackRock Inc. may average more than $200 billion in annual investor deposits over the next five years after the acquisition of Barclays Global Investors added passive funds, said Robert Kapito, the firm’s president.
Net new business at the world’s largest money manager, which oversees $3.35 trillion, may grow at a rate of 5 percent to 6 percent, Kapito said in an interview from his New York office. The numbers don’t include market appreciation.
“We have the largest distribution force in the asset- management business so I think we certainly can do that,” said Kapito, 52. “We expect to see growth in the passive and the iShares business -- those two are getting a lion’s share of the money -- and the alternatives business,” said Kapito, who along with Chief Executive Officer Laurence D. Fink is a co-founder of New York-based BlackRock.
Government Borrowing Is Rising Risk to World Financial System
Projected losses shrinking among banks
Government risk is new threat to prolonging financial crisis
Credit recovery will be slow
April 21, 2010--The global financial system and the world economy are slowly regaining their health, thanks in large part to unprecedented interventions by governments, but the sharp rise in government debt during the economic crisis from already elevated levels helped create what the IMF says is the newest threat to the financial system: growing sovereign risk.
That is not to say that the private financial sector is fully recovered. Indeed, the recovery in the financial sector remains “fragile,” according to José Viñals, Financial Counselor and Director of the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department.
Bank balance sheets still contain bad assets, consumers and businesses remain stretched, and credit recovery is some time off, the IMF said in its latest Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR), released April 20. Moreover, a large part of the financial system continues to rely in varying degrees upon the extraordinary measures governments began to introduce two years ago—such as purchasing bad assets from, and injecting capital into, troubled institutions.
World Must Now Focus on Financial Sector Reform, Says IMF
World economy to bounce back to 4.2 percent growth, says Strauss-Kahn
But major problems remain including weak private sector demand, high unemployment
Need to tackle financial sector reform around the world more quickly
April 22, 2010--The international economy is recovering faster than expected from the global crisis, but the world remains a dangerous place and governments should now focus on stepping up reform of financial sector regulation to avoid future crises, said IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kah.
Speaking ahead of meetings in Washington of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Group of Twenty (G-20) leading industrial and emerging market countries, Strauss-Kahn said the faster-than-expected recovery was testament to the unprecedented cooperation between major economies to combat the crisis.
But in a wide-ranging press conference that also touched on Greece, Iceland, Argentina, China, and reform of the IMF, among other issues, he told reporters on April 22 that the recovery remained uneven and the world could not go back to business as usual.
Need to secure recovery
The goal now is to secure and advance the recovery, because even if the recovery is stronger and faster than expected, it is still fragile. And it is fragile mainly because it is uneven, he said. The world is still a dangerous place, and I don't like that many people have in mind that the crisis is over, that everything is behind us, and we can go back to business as usual.
Strauss-Kahn pointed to a variety of problems, including high unemployment in advanced economies, weak private demand, high government debt, the risk of asset price bubbles in emerging markets, and the need to press ahead rapidly with financial sector reform.
Releasing the IMF's latest economic forecast on April 21, IMF Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard said the world faced an important new stage of the crisis. Achieving strong, sustained, and balanced growth would require more work, namely fiscal consolidation in advanced countries, exchange rate adjustments, and a rebalancing of demand across the world.
view the WORLD ECONOMIC OUTLOOK
April 2010-Rebalancing Growth
Hedge fund managers move cautiously in an uncertain world
April 22, 2010--While the crisis that afflicted the hedge fund sector in 2008 and early 2009 may be essentially over, with market conditions remaining volatile and investors still cautious, there is no prospect of an immediate return to the buoyant growth conditions that prevailed through the mid-2000s, according to industry professionals. And continuing economic uncertainty, especially in Europe, continues to weigh on prospects for the next 12 months – although some hedge fund managers have been relishing the return of volatility to the markets over the past couple of years.
An average performance loss of around 20 per cent in 2008 was matched by a virtually equal rebound last year, and while hedge fund returns over the first couple of months of this year were patchy, March saw a fresh uplift of as much as 3 per cent – albeit helped by a surge of more than 5 per cent in US equity prices – according to index providers such as hedge fund advisory firm Hennessee Group, whose main index increased by 3.05 per cent. The Barclay Hedge Fund Index gained 3.08 per cent and Hedge Fund Research’s HFRI index 2.70 per cent, while the Lyxor Hedge Fund Index rose by 2.12 per cent and the Credit Suisse/Tremont Hedge Fund Index by 2.22 per cent.
