Emerging from the shadow of the dollar

摘要

It wasn't very long ago that forex traders, nursing losses, were rudely dismissive of the euro. Whatever the vagaries of the foreign exchanges, in the capital markets, the new currency has triumphantly come of age. In 2003, for the first time, there was more international bond issuance in euros than in dollars, a trend that seems likely to continue, even though this year's volumes have been disappointing. Last year's euro-denominated international issuance totalled EUD988bn ($1113bn), according to figures from Thomson Financial, against dollar-denominated proceeds of $898bn. Though the euro deals were of smaller average size, there were considerably more of them — 2316 compared with 1333 dollar issues.