Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Nice way to ring out the old and bring in the new

You know how all this past year the British, the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, and the accounting industry have all been talking about the demise of the U.S. capital market and its usurpation by the London Stock Exchange? Well, apparently news of the U.S. demise has been slightly exaggerated...

Last week, the Financial Times reported on U.S. companies have raised the most money through IPOs since 2000, just before the tech bubble burst. (See US deals reach six-year record IPOs). At the same time, U.S. stocks enjoyed best perfomance since 2003. While Hong Kong beat out both London and New York in terms of actual capital raised through IPOs, U.S. companies as a group beat out all but the Chinese in terms of capital-raising. (The monster IPOs of ICBC and Bank of China put China firmly in top place).

Not bad for a has-been, over-regulated market.

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