League tables are an integral part of investment banking and the securities business - as much in Asia as anywhere else in the world. Banks pride themselves on top table positions and many a young analyst has worked well into the night trying to figure out ways to compile data so their bank comes top. The variety and number of league tables that are cited shows how important some people believe these tables are for winning new mandates and securing the new Porsche when bonus time comes.
But sometimes the league tables can show deeper trends in the overall market. In the following table, I have listed investment banks according to the average performance of the Asian equity and equity linked deals they have brought to market from January 1 2000 until May 19 2000. Before I reveal who are the winners and who are the losers, I will take a closer look at some of the averages and ratios thrown up by the figures.
Overall, the average price performance for an Asian equity or equity linked deal this year has been minus 12.7%. This figure is not as bad as it sounds. Compared to the underlying markets and their indices, the performance of new issues has been positive. The MSCI All Asia Free (ex-Japan, ex-Australia) index is down 18.23%. The Hang Seng is down 17.85%. The Nasdaq is down 22.23%. The Straits Times Index in Singapore is down 24.51%. And the Kospi in Korea is down 34.35%. As I write this today, the Malaysian and Taiwanese indices are the only positive indices in Asia.
What this shows is that even in a bear market, it still bears fruit to get into a deal - if only to beat the benchmarks. Institutional investors who have participated in IPOs, secondary placements and ADRs of Asian companies have probably beaten the index. This supposition works only if the investors bought at the offer price, and not at the top of the market. Moreover, of the $13.389 billion that has been raised in these Asian equity and equity linked deals, $5.7 billion of that new money is in stocks that are trading profitably, while $7.682 billion of the money is in stocks that are trading negatively. However only 11 out of the 49 deals are positively trading deals, whereas 38 of the 49 deals are in negative territory. In other words, while many deals have performed badly, if an investor bought into every deal, they would have probably beaten the benchmarks. Or to put it the other way, selective investing could have been either very lucrative or very costly.
So here is the table that shows the average performance of the deals that each investment bank has brought to the market in Asia so far this year.
| Bookrunner | Deals | Average performance | |
| 1 | Morgan Stanley Dean Witter | 3 | 99.50% |
| 2 | Salomon Smith Barney | 3 | 29.20% |
| 3 | CICC | 1 | 26.60% |
| 4 | Jardine Fleming | 2 | 8.15% |
| 5 | ICEA | 1 | -1% |
| 6 | Deutsche | 1 | -2% |
| 7 | BNP Paribas Peregrine | 10 | -11.67% |
| 8 | Bank of America | 1 | -13.20% |
| 9 | DBS Securities | 3 | -18.50% |
| 10 | Goldman Sachs | 11 | -18.96% |
| 11 | ING Barings | 3 | -21.83% |
| 12 | Merrill Lynch | 6 | -25.55% |
| 13 | UBS Warburg | 2 | -30.80% |
| 14 | ABN Amro Rothschild | 2 | -42.10% |
| 15 | CSFB | 2 | -42.60% |
| 16 | Lehman Brothers | 2 | -46.05% |
| 17 | CLSA | 3 | -55.20% |
| 18 | HSBC | 1 | -59.40% |
As ever, there are many caveats about the figures. Given the relatively small number of deals that each bank has done, one or two big swings can affect the mean average by a large amount. Deals such as Tom.com, which is still - unbelievably - up by 245%, can swing the numbers heavily. If you strip Tom.com out of BNP Paribas Peregrine's figures, that bank has delivered a performance of minus 40.24%.
Moving out to the general trends again, these figures show that while performance of the deals as a whole on the new issue front have not been as bad as all that, selected deals from selected banks have absolutely tanked. But on the other hand, if you are an investor lucky enough to have only bought Morgan Stanley deals...well I suppose you are reading this on the beach.
