Guy Benstead, a partner at Cedar Ridge Partners in San Francisco, said: "Public issuers are challenged; it's tough, tax receipts are down, revenues are down, local authorities are struggling, that makes the market very sensitive".
The thrust of the JOBS Act is to enable issuers, and the banks supporting them, to provide investors with more of some kinds of information (research reports and promotional materials) and less of other kinds (historical accounting data).
The obvious thread is that all three countries are sovereign issuers of a fiat currency in which their bonds are denominated.
Issuers are taking a closer look at the auction-based IPOs pioneered by W.R. Hambrecht, an investment-banking boutique in California.
Strangely, issuers didn't seem to mind the intentional underpricing of their IPO.
The need to keep on top of financial-market developments may mean that investors as well as issuers benefit from economies of scale in having a single big regulator.Besides, how bad can regulation by the SEC be, given that America has the world's biggest, most liquid securities markets?
In January, despite much talk of a "great rotation" out of bonds and into equities, bond funds received inflows of $38.1 billion and equity funds (domestic and international) had inflows of $37.8 billion.There are a few signs that investors are demanding higher yields from corporate issuers in 2013 but nothing that indicates panic.
Fees can be a powerful incentive; in Delaware, the state in which more American firms are incorporated than any other, incorporation fees provide one-fifth of the state's tax revenues.Even supposing that the SEC is as keen to serve securities issuers as any state would be, competition should mean better regulation.
Issuers of cat bonds only benefit in the event of an (inherently rare) natural disaster: that means there is little incentive for speculators to sell cat bonds as well as buy them.
On the Internet, credit-card issuers will not accept the risk of fraud, instead charging losses back to the merchant.Enter PayPal, an American e-payment system, that has earned new respect from its rivals for reaching "critical mass", even promising to make a profit by July.
In 1987 just 38.1% of issuers in the American bond market were rated as speculative, or "junk".
