Fees generated for banks from European capital market activities accounted for their lowest proportion of the global total since records began in 2000, as the sovereign debt crisis shook confidence in the region.
Instead, investors’ funds have been drawn in particular to the potential growth of US and Asian companies, in a year that has been one of the strongest for equity and junk bond fundraisings.
“Macro-economic considerations have dominated investor psychology in 2010; investors have taken more of a ‘top-down’ than a ‘bottom-up’ approach,” says Craig Coben, head of European equity capital markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “European investors remain very underweight in equities but we believe investors are starting to rotate funds from bonds into equities.”