りんごとたまねぎの強力抗がん作用：日刊ゲンダイから引用
「１日１個のリンゴが医者を遠ざける」という西洋の古い諺(ことわざ)があるが、最新の研究もそれを裏付けている。
フィンランドの公衆衛生研究所が1965年にガンにかかっていない男女9995人を対象に始めた食習慣とガンの発病の相関を確める追跡研究の結果が1991年に発表されたのだ。
1991年までの26年間に997人がガンになり、そのうちの151人は肺ガンだった。
ガンの発病のリスクを顕著に高めたのはフラボノイドがあまり摂れない食事で、フラボノイドが毎日摂れる食事をしている人よりも20％多く発病していた。そして、フラボノイドを非常に多く摂っている人たちと比較すると、46％も多く発病していた。
フラボノイドはファイトケミカルの一つで、植物が外部から受けるさまざまなストレスに対して自分を守るために作り出している物質である。だから、当然ながら植物にしか含まれていない。
種類は極めて多く、確認されているだけでも4000以上の化学的に特異なフラボノイドが存在している。
われわれが日常食べている植物性の食品に含まれているフラボノイドの重要なものは十指に余るけれども、その働きの一つは抗酸化作用で、ビタミンＣと共働するという特徴を持っている。特別の食品にのみ含まれているのではなく、ありふれた日常的な果物、豆、ナッツ、種、穀類、お茶に含まれている物質である。
フィンランドの研究者たちは、そういう食品を食べてフラボノイドが多く摂れる食事をしている人がガンにかかりにくいことを明らかにしたのだが、特に重要な働きをしていると考えられる食品の第１はリンゴだったと述べている。それに肉薄していた第２位は、玉ねぎである。
リンゴを毎日１個食べている人たち、玉ねぎを日常多く食べている人たちのガンの発病率が最も低かったわけで、この２つの食品の共通点は、全食品中で最も多くケルセチンというフラボノイドを含んでいることから、研究者たちはケルセチンには強い抗ガン作用があるのではないかと推論している。
リンゴは抗ガン食品であるだけでなく、心臓も守ってくれる。リンゴに豊富に含まれている水溶性の食物繊維のペクチンが血中コレステロール値を下げるからだ。
同時にペクチンは腸内でゼリー状にゲル化するので腸の筋肉の排便の働きも助けてくれる。
●丸元淑生(まるもと・よしお) 1934年、大分県生まれ。東京大学文学部仏文科卒。作家、栄養学ジャーナリスト、料理研究家。
EUROPE2020の引用;システミックリスクの展開を示す９つの指標
LEAP/E2020 PUBLIC COMMUNICATION USA-Dollar-Iran / Confirmation of Global Systemic Crisis end of March 2006 |
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Economist記事から：世界経済
The world economy Testing all engines
From The Economist print edition
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Global growth is looking less lopsided than for many years
LARRY SUMMERS, a Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, once said that “the world economy is flying on one engine” to describe its excessive reliance on American demand. Now growth seems to be becoming more even at last: Europe and Japan are revving up, as are most emerging economies. As a result, if (or when) the American engine stalls, the global aeroplane will not necessarily crash.
For the time being, America's monetary policymakers think that their economy is still running pretty well. This week, as Alan Greenspan handed over the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve to Ben Bernanke, the Fed marked the end of Mr Greenspan's 18-year reign by raising interest rates for the 14th consecutive meeting, to 4.5%. The central bankers also gave Mr Bernanke more flexibility by softening their policy statement: they said that further tightening “may be needed” rather than “is likely to be needed”, as before.
Most analysts expect the Fed to raise rates once or twice more, although the economy slowed sharply in late 2005. Real GDP growth fell to an annual rate of only 1.1% in the fourth quarter, the lowest for three years. Economists were quick to ascribe this disappointing number to special factors, such as Hurricane Katrina and a steep fall in car sales—the consequence of generous incentives that had encouraged buyers to bring purchases forward to the third quarter. The consensus has it that growth will bounce back to an annual rate of over 4% in the first quarter and stay strong thereafter.
This sounds too optimistic. A rebound is indeed likely in this quarter, but the rest of the year could prove disappointing, as a weakening housing market starts to weigh on consumer spending. In December sales of existing homes fell markedly and the stock of unsold homes surged. Economists at Goldman Sachs calculate that, after adjusting for seasonal patterns, the median home price has fallen by almost 4% since October. Experience from Britain and Australia shows that even a soft landing for house prices can cause an acute slowdown in consumer spending.
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American consumers have been the main engine not just of their own economy but of the whole world's. If that engine fails, will the global economy nose-dive? A few years ago, the answer would probably have been yes. But the global economy may now be less vulnerable. At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, Jim O'Neill, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs, argued convincingly that a slowdown in America need not lead to a significant global loss of power.
Start with Japan, where industrial output jumped by an annual rate of 11% in the fourth quarter. Goldman Sachs has raised its GDP growth forecast for that quarter (the official number is due on February 17th) to an annualised 4.2%. That would push year-on-year growth to 3.9%, well ahead of America's 3.1%. The bank predicts average GDP growth in Japan this year of 2.7%. It thinks strong demand within Asia will partly offset an American slowdown.
Japan's labour market is also strengthening. In December the ratio of vacancies to job applicants rose to its highest since 1992 (see chart 1). It is easier to find a job now than at any time since the bubble burst in the early 1990s. Stronger hiring by firms is also pushing up wages after years of decline. Workers are enjoying the biggest rise in bonuses for over a decade.
Higher incomes mean more spending: households spent 3.2% more in December than a year earlier. And according to Richard Jerram, of Macquarie Bank, retail sales rose in 2005 for the first full year since 1996. In other words, Japan's growth is becoming much less dependent on exports. The disappearance of deflation has also reduced real interest rates, giving further support to domestic demand.
Even the euro area is emerging from the doldrums. In Germany in particular, vigorous corporate restructuring has boosted productivity and profits. So far, however, this has been at the expense of jobs and wages, and hence of consumer spending—although with capital expenditure picking up, new hiring is likely to follow. Mr O'Neill suggests that Germany is where Japan was 18 months ago.
The official German job figures for January were disappointing. After falling steadily over the past year, the unemployment rate unexpectedly rose to 11.3% and the total number of jobless rose back above 5m. But the figures are partly distorted by statistical changes and new rules on eligibility for benefits. Evidence from business surveys certainly point to an improving labour market.
Further bad news this week came in the shape of a 1.5% drop in retail sales in the year to December. That could imply a decline in total consumer spending for a fourth consecutive quarter, which has never happened in the 45 years since records began. On the other hand, consumer confidence surveys suggest that households are starting to feel chirpier this year.
The Ifo survey of German business confidence also indicates that the recovery is spreading to consumers. Retailers' confidence in January rose to its highest for five years. The expectations component of the overall survey rose to its highest since November 1994. If the traditional relationship between Ifo's business-confidence index and GDP growth holds (see chart 2), then Germany's economy could grow this year by much more than most economists are forecasting.
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For the first time in many years, Germany's domestic demand looks set to contribute more to growth in 2006 than its net exports will. Elsewhere in the euro area, domestic demand has been the main source of growth in any case. According to Morgan Stanley, since 1999 it has supplied 95% of the zone's GDP growth. These economies are therefore more resistant to external shocks than is generally thought.
Although Germany is leading the pack, businesses throughout the euro area are feeling perkier. The European Commission's survey of business sentiment rose healthily in January, to a level that could signal GDP growth of well above the consensus forecast of 2% for this year.
Stronger demand will embolden the monetary hawks in the European Central Bank. The bank left interest rates unchanged at 2.25% on February 2nd, but many economists expect it to raise them in March. UBS thinks rates will reach 3% by September. Might that dampen the recovery? Probably not: in inflation-adjusted terms, rates would still be low.
Alongside stronger domestic demand in Europe and Japan, emerging economies are also tipped to remain robust. These economies are popularly perceived as excessively export-dependent, flooding the world with cheap goods, but doing little to boost demand. Yet calculations by Goldman Sachs show that Brazil, Russia, India and China combined have in recent years contributed more to the world's domestic demand than to its GDP growth. They have chipped in almost as much to global domestic demand as America has.
If this picture endures, a moderate slowdown in America need not halt the expansion in the rest of the world. Europe and Japan together account for a bigger slice of global GDP than the United States, so faster growth there will help to keep the global economy flying. A rebalancing of demand away from America to the rest of the world would also help to shrink its huge current-account deficit.
This all assumes that America's economy slows, rather than sinks into recession. The world is undoubtedly better placed to cope with a slowdown in the United States than it was a few years ago. That said, in those same few years America's imbalances have become larger, with the risk that the eventual correction will be more painful. A deep downturn in America would be felt all around the globe.
Economist記事から：ヘッジファンドについて
Growing pains
From The Economist print edition
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As institutional investors move in, hedge funds are losing some of their rough edges—and their spectacular returns
IN QUIET moments veteran hedge-fund managers sound a little wistful these days. Being a “hedgie”, they reflect, isn't as much fun as it used to be. This may seem hard to believe, since many hedge-fund managers are very rich indeed. Steven Cohen, a hedge-fund star in Greenwich, Connecticut (the industry's main cluster in America) took home more than $500m last year. Plenty of others have pocketed $100m or more.
Much of the nostalgia is for an era of spectacular returns. Last year, overall returns in hedge funds were modest at best (although 2006 is off to a stronger start). But something more profound is going on: hedge funds are growing up. What once was a cottage industry is being institutionalised. The mix of investors has changed dramatically in the past five years, and that has led to big shifts in everything from fund size to competition, risk profiles, transparency and—horrors!—regulation.
That has raised a paradox: can the industry be big and yet retain the innovative, risk-taking culture that produced the returns which, in turn, encouraged more conservative investors to invest in it? There are signs that some leading fund managers are limiting the size of their funds because they think big money is incompatible with their way of doing business. Meanwhile, hedge funds face other pressures. New investors are more demanding and, curiously, risk-averse, which is forcing some hedge funds to change their investment style. And competition is growing, as more traditional fund managers introduce products that mimic hedge funds and crowd the market, making it harder to distinguish a genuine hedge fund from a souped-up traditional fund.
Amid all the change, regulators are looking more closely at the sector than in the past. This week Britain's Financial Services Authority (FSA) levied a £1.5m ($2.6m) fine against GLG Partners, a hedge fund based in London, and one of its traders, for improper securities trading. French regulators are reportedly also investigating GLG and its co-founder Pierre Lagrange, along with other big London-based hedge funds, for alleged insider trading. Such scrutiny is yet another restraint on hedge funds' buccaneering culture.
The changing investor mix is one reason why regulators are watching the sector more closely. Until recently, hedge funds were the exclusive preserve of rich Texans, Arab sheikhs and family offices of the super-wealthy. These investors put their millions in the hands of entrepreneurial fund managers who promised—and often delivered—stellar returns whilst offering almost no explanation of how they did it.
Today's hedge funds are increasingly monitored by professional managers at pension funds, endowments, foundations and even central banks—a much less colourful and vastly more demanding bunch. This new group of investors controls sums huge enough to make the assets of most hedge funds look like rounding errors. In short, they are investors with clout.
Today 50-60% of hedge-fund assets come from institutions, reckons Oliver Schupp, president of the Credit Suisse/Tremont Index, an indicator of fund performance. This trend is most pronounced in Japan and, to a lesser extent, pockets of continental Europe. In America, where the bulk of hedge funds are based, endowments and foundations embraced the sector early on, whereas other institutions were more tentative. Britain has the smallest take-up by institutional investors, although London is a big base for hedge-fund managers. “There's been much more cynicism among UK investors, due to the lack of transparency,” says Dominic Rossi of Threadneedle Asset Management, an investment firm that manages traditional as well as hedge funds.
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Institutional money has helped the sector to balloon. There are more than 8,000 hedge funds today, with more than $1 trillion of assets under management. Institutions are increasingly attracted to two sorts of hedge-fund providers, says William Wechsler of Greenwich Associates, a consultancy: firms with multiple hedging strategies on offer and research to back up their claims, such as Bridgewater Associates; or traditional fund managers such as Barclays Global Investors (BGI) and State Street Global Advisors that have added hedge-fund products in recent years. In America, he notes, there has been a net outflow of institutional money recently from so-called “funds of funds”, which offer a mix of hedge-fund investments in one product to diversify risk, but also add another layer of fees.
Although there is a stronger institutional feel to the hedge-fund business today, that is not to say the cult of personality has disappeared. Most funds are clustered near a few places, such as Connecticut and London, and there is a steady buzz about the latest manager to jump ship and start his own firm. Even university-endowment managers are getting in on the act: Jack Meyer, formerly head of Harvard University's endowment fund, recently raised a record $6 billion for his start-up hedge fund. Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft, has reportedly put $1 billion of his own money into a new firm being launched by Mike McCaffrey, who as chief investment officer at Stanford University helped that entity's $14.3 billion endowment to earn double-digit annual returns for a decade. Other hedge funds have launched with “star” power from investment banks. Eton Park Capital is run by Eric Mindich, formerly of Goldman Sachs, and Cantillon Capital was started by William von Mueffling, previously a successful portfolio manager at Lazard.
Indeed, the industry is still largely driven by personalities and reputations. Investors are backing the managers they believe can find and exploit inefficiencies or wrinkles in the market better than anyone else. How to reconcile the reality of this large and increasingly conservative sector with its swash-buckling and secretive image? “Perception always takes a while to catch up with reality,” says Stanley Fink, chief executive of Man Group, a global asset-management firm with a big stable of hedge funds. “The days of 30%-plus returns for hedge funds are long gone,” he says. “The Wild West is over.”
Expectations of annual returns have certainly changed: ten or 15 years ago, investors “wanted 30-50% returns and could handle the down years,” says Jerry del Missier of Barclays Capital, an investment bank. Now pension funds will settle for 8-10% returns, but want less volatility. In general, he says, “people have stopped looking for the drama.”
That is not to suggest things are dull. Hedge funds are popping up everywhere, using their muscle in takeover battles and shareholder revolts. Secrecy and limited regulation remain hallmarks of the sector. But some industry observers suggest the activism and other high-profile tactics—admittedly, still practised by only a small fraction of hedge funds—are evidence that the industry has become more mainstream. For some, activism can be very profitable: the Children's Investment Fund Management, a London-based fund that led a successful shareholder revolt against incumbent managers at Deutsche Börse in 2004, had net returns of 43% that year and 50% in 2005.
Overall, though, hedge-fund returns have been far from stellar in recent years. The Credit Suisse/Tremont Hedge Fund Index rose a mere 7.61% in 2005, on the heels of a relatively lacklustre 2004. A recent study by Harry Kat and Helder Palaro of Cass Business School in London says that in recent years fewer than one in five hedge funds gave investors returns above what they could have made themselves trading the S&P 500 stock index, Treasury bonds and Eurodollar futures. The pace has picked up at the start of 2006—the index was up 3.23% in January, the strongest monthly performance since August 2000—but overall returns are unlikely to be stunning.
Surprisingly, given the hype surrounding the sector, there was probably a modest net outflow of money from hedge funds in 2005. Exactly how much left is unclear, because the industry lacks a central database. Attempts to generalise are complicated further by the fact that hedge funds are actually a collection of different investment strategies (see article ) rather than a coherent asset class.
Nevertheless, much of the money that came into the industry was from institutions. The $200 billion CalPERS Retirement system, one of America's biggest investors, recently doubled the size of its hedge-fund investments to $2 billion. Also in California, the San Diego County employees' retirement association, America's top-performing big public-retirement fund over the past decade, has about one-fifth of its total assets ($1.3 billion) in various hedge funds, roughly the same share as in the big university endowments.
Given the mediocre returns, why are institutions investing? Partly because of poor returns in other asset classes and the herd's sense that others have made a lot of money from hedge funds. But their belated arrival also signals slow decision-making processes—changing the strategy of a big institutional investor takes time.
According to a recent report on European investors by the Centre for Risk and Asset Management at EDHEC, a French business school, diversification is another powerful reason why institutions think they should invest in hedge funds. The study found that hedge funds had low correlations with other investments. Other advantages cited by institutions included hedge funds' low volatility, lack of correlation with economic cycles, and the extreme risks they can afford—presumably in the hope of making big returns.
Pension funds have been particularly keen to diversify as they struggle to address a longstanding mismatch between their assets and long-duration liabilities. Mark Tapley, a pension-fund adviser and administrator at the hedge-fund centre run by London Business School (LBS), notes that consulting actuaries are searching for liability-matching strategies. He says there is a more intense search for what is known as “alpha” (returns above those of the relevant market index).
Some investors remain sceptical. “We're very nervous whether we have the skills to identify the hedge-fund managers with the right strategies, as opposed to those who are lucky or have a good story to tell,” Penny Green, a trustee with a British university employees' pension scheme, told an industry conference recently. Other institutional investors complain about a lack of understanding about investment techniques, a shortage of staff to investigate alternatives and worries about corporate governance (including potential lawsuits). “People want to know exactly how you're making your money,” says Fred Dopfel of BGI. He says institutional investors need to know exactly how hedge-fund strategies fit with the rest of their portfolios. They also seek a clear separation of returns: “Market exposures are cheap,” he says. “Alpha is expensive.” In other words, hedge-fund managers charge a lot to beat the market average.
A typical fund's compensation structure involves a 1% or 2% management fee (a few have stretched the limits with 3%, but investors balked), plus fees paying out 20% of performance. In Europe an estimated 75% of institutional investors with hedge-fund assets are in funds of funds. Increasingly, though, multi-strategy funds are attracting more interest.
The size of individual hedge funds is a growing concern for fund managers. “Once you become large it starts hurting, for a variety of reasons,” says Narayan Naik, director of the hedge fund centre at the LBS: “No market is anonymous when you need quantity.” Automated trading programs have proliferated, as funds increasingly flood exchanges with multiple small orders, in order to camouflage their trading strategies.
Several studies last year were pessimistic about the industry's ability to generate long-term returns as it grows larger. More and more retail investment funds are capping their sizes in an effort to protect their agility and performance. Mr Meyer's fund, Convexity Capital Management, has reportedly decided to accept no more than $1 billion per year in new investments over the next three years.
As hedge funds get bigger, the worry is that managers will also become more cautious. For a growing number of managers, the main goal is “not to make mistakes,” says Matthew Ridley of Consulta, a family office and investment firm. He notes that managers of large funds can live nicely on management fees alone. For retail investors and those institutions seeking edgier strategies or a personalised approach, he recommends smaller funds.
Mr Fink says he, too, worries about managers becoming too risk-averse. A shift into “asset-retention mode”, he says, is “the kiss of death”. Man Group has dealt with the difficulty by offering two sorts of hedge funds, he says: those that provide more transparency and lower returns, and those that are more opaque, focused and likely to give higher returns—for example Man Group's AHL Fund, a managed-futures fund that uses automated “black box” trading to invest in more than 100 futures markets across the world. It returned 14.3% in 2005, and has had average returns of 18.1% since it started.
Regulatory oversight of hedge funds remains relatively light, but there are signs that it, too, may grow more burdensome. Although hedge funds can set up almost anywhere, fund managers still like the marketing value of the imprimatur of America's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or Britain's FSA. The SEC's fund-registration deadline on February 1st, which also affected large foreign funds with numerous American investors, was resisted by the industry, but stricter regulations are probably inevitable when retail investors' money is at stake.
Many observers predict consolidation among hedge funds in years to come. The liquidation rate of funds surged last year. Others have been bought out in whole or part by bigger businesses: Legg Mason, a big mutual-fund firm, bought Permal Group, a hedge-fund firm, for about $1 billion last year; ABN Amro, the banking group, bought out International Asset Management, one of London's oldest fund-of-fund managers, in January; and the derivatives unit of American International Group, an insurance giant that already has a fund-of-funds unit, bought a 4.3% stake in Aspect Capital earlier this month. The trend makes sense to those who watch the industry closely. “There are too many managers chasing too few opportunities,” says Mr Naik. “Everyone is using the same models.”
Economist記事から：無形資産の評価
Getting a grip on prosperity
From The Economist print edition
What changes if intangible investment is measured properly?
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ARGUING that America is ill served by its economic statistics has become fashionable. Stodgy old national-income accounts are said to do a poor job of measuring the modern “knowledge” economy. They are especially bad at picking up firms' “intangible” investments, such as building brands or training staff. Measure this spending properly, the argument runs, and America's true economic health would be revealed. Investment and output growth would be higher; the pesky external deficit would be lower. As Business Week put it recently, the “unmasked” American economy is “a lot stronger than you think”.
Really? It would certainly be convenient if America's much-vaunted macroeconomic weaknesses (a falling saving rate, over-reliance on foreign borrowing to finance consumption) were mere statistical mirages. Unfortunately, things are not so simple. Although measuring intangibles does change the picture of America's economy, it does not necessarily improve it.
Under today's international system of national-income accounting, overall investment includes firms' spending on fixed capital (such as factories or computers), additions to inventories, and expenditure on residential and commercial property. Spending on research or organisational improvements, in contrast, is not counted as investment but as spending on current inputs. Because national accounts are calculated on a value-added basis, it drops out of overall GDP. Granted, official statistics are evolving. Many countries now class expenditure on software as investment. Statistical agencies are also discussing the capitalisation of research and development spending. But other intangible investment goes uncounted.
Few economists doubt that boosting a brand can be an investment, just as building a factory is: conceptually, investment is simply spending today that yields a stream of income in the future. The problem is practical. Intangible investment is often hard to identify, let alone value. How much of an advertising campaign is part of the cost of selling a product (and thus current spending) and how much is investment in a brand?
In recent research* Carol Corrado and Dan Sichel, of the Federal Reserve, and Charles Hulten, of the University of Maryland, have tried to estimate the scale of intangible investments in America. The authors look at spending on all manner of things, from developing copyrights to tuition payments for job-related training. Often they are forced to make heroic assumptions, guessing, for instance, that managers spend 20% of their time on organisational innovation (an investment) and the rest running their firms. Given such guesswork, the results should not be taken too precisely. But they are striking nonetheless.
The authors find that the pace of intangible investment by American firms has risen sharply in recent decades: by the late 1990s, it was around $1 trillion a year, about the same as expenditure on traditional fixed assets. According to today's official statistics, America's investment rate has been pretty flat since the 1950s. Count intangibles, and it has been rising steadily (see chart). In the 1950s the inclusion of intangible investments would have raised GDP by 5%. In recent years it would have lifted it by 12%. Using yet more assumptions (this time about depreciation rates), the authors reckon that excluding intangibles may understate America's capital stock by $3.6 trillion. Even if this is only roughly right, intangibles seem too big to ignore.
Thanks to higher investment, including intangibles pushes up productivity growth too—although it does not explain the acceleration of productivity after 1995. Capitalising intangible spending raises average productivity growth between 1973-95 by more than it does for the years since then.
A striking shift occurs between labour and capital. Official statistics say that workers' share of national income has been fairly flat for decades. Capitalising intangible investment increases capital's slice and reduces labour's, with a particularly sharp drop after 1980. If intangibles are included, labour's share today drops from 70% to 60%.
If investment is higher than today's statistics suggest, so, automatically, is saving. With firms' current spending lower and profits fatter, corporate saving (and so national saving) must be higher. It follows that the capitalisation of intangibles alone does not affect America's external deficit, which is the difference between what the country saves and what it invests.
Not exactly, argue some knowledge-economy optimists. First, they claim, ignoring intangibles affects America's external accounts directly. Were intangibles measured properly, the current-account deficit might be smaller, since America exports lots of managerial know-how and other intangible assets. Two Harvard economists recently labelled these and other uncounted exports “dark matter”. To most other economists, however, this argument is thin. Even if intangible exports were counted explicitly (rather than as part of firms' profits on foreign operations), they would not alter the overall reliance on foreign funds.
The optimists' second argument is that the reliance on foreign capital may be real, but it is less worrisome. Borrowing to boost skills or research is quite different from borrowing to fuel a consumption binge. Close examination of Ms Corrado's, Mr Sichel's and Mr Hulten's estimates casts doubt on this too. Their numbers suggest that intangible investment slowed sharply after 2000, the year the stockmarket bubble burst—as America's current-account deficit soared. Foreigners may have been funding intangible investment in the roaring 1990s, but not since. A more accurate measure of the information economy is certainly worth having, but it does not make America any less profligate.
Economist記事から:野蛮人がヨーロッパへ証券取引所へ殺到
Barbarians at the gates of Europe
From The Economist print edition
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Leveraged buy-outs are growing in Europe, and so are doubtful debts
INEOS is not yet a household name. The British bulk-chemicals producer was formed only eight years ago and the New Forest, its base in southern England, is better known for ponies than for petrochemicals. But when INEOS tapped the debt markets last month to finance a €9 billion ($10.8 billion) takeover of some of BP's chemical assets, it found no shortage of interest. According to one person who worked on what proved to be one of Europe's largest-ever leveraged deals, creditors had within weeks offered €25 billion, almost three times what INEOS needed.
The size, speed and success of INEOS's debt-raising gives a sense of the sea-change taking place in Europe's capital markets. It was evident in the ballroom at London's Four Seasons Hotel on January 11th, when hundreds of hedge-fund executives and other fund managers heard how they could lend to INEOS, one of the world's biggest chemicals companies. A few years ago, that type of credit institution barely existed in Europe, where lending was a clubby affair handled mostly by banks. But the funds have emerged in search of the yields that lending in highly leveraged transactions can command. In INEOS's case, 490 of them expressed an interest in lending.
The sea-change is also reflected in the fancy array of debt instruments that INEOS coaxed from creditors. They were a far cry from the “plain vanilla” syndicated loans it would have expected in an earlier credit cycle. They included three tranches of term loans, some mezzanine-like debt called “second lien”, and ten-year junk bonds, denominated both in euros and in dollars. All were rated below investment grade, meaning they carry a high risk of default. But each segment was of a record size for Europe, says Malcolm Stewart of Merrill Lynch, an investment bank that co-ordinated the transaction. For once, most of the demand came from creditors in the euro area, rather than Americans. “The European leverage market has clearly matured. It is no longer the little sister of America,” says Mr Stewart.
Such maturity suggests that if—and it is a big if—credit conditions remain benign, there are pots of money to be lent to the right borrower. This has sent bankers on a quest for deals even larger than INEOS's. Several believe that within the coming weeks or months there will be a leveraged buy-out in Europe to rival—at least in nominal terms—that of America's RJR Nabisco, the grandfather of them all. It was sold for $25 billion to a buy-out group in 1988, and its story was told in a bestselling book, “Barbarians at the Gate”.
Large corporations are also potential beneficiaries. They could either gear up for acquisitions, or they could raise debt defensively, as Britain's BAA, the world's largest airport operator, may do to fend off a highly leveraged potential bid from Ferrovial, a Spanish conglomerate.
This makes sense as long as interest rates or a downturn do not put borrowers under intolerable strain. Already, some lenders are beginning to worry that they may be in too deep. Data from J.P. Morgan imply that debt taken on in the sub-investment-grade market in Europe to finance a typical leveraged buy-out rose to nearly eight times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation in 2005, up from just over seven times in 2004.
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According to Standard & Poor's LCD, a leveraged-finance unit of the ratings agency, the volume of such leveraged loans almost doubled last year, to €123 billion, growing at a much faster rate than in America, where there are also signs of strain. Meanwhile, although default rates are low, S&P has detected an increase in the speed with which new European borrowers breached their loan covenants last year, forcing them to negotiate expensive waivers with their creditors.
An area of particular concern to the ratings agencies is the extra debt that borrowers are piling on to their balance sheets. This is either because their private-equity owners want dividends (as at Debenhams, a British department-store chain that found its leveraged loan issue last year was unpopular among institutional investors), or because the company has been “recycled” from another private-equity group. Gala, a British bingo and casino operator, stood out last year for its ability to borrow money repeatedly to pay off its private-equity backers, and to finance the £2.2 billion ($3.8 billion) acquisition of a rival, Coral Eurobet.
The rating agencies say that the deteriorating credit quality of those trying to finance adventurous takeovers could spell trouble. They expect an increase in default rates this year or next, even if the economic conditions for borrowers do not deteriorate much. Bankers are keen not to be left holding a toxic tranche of unsellable debt if the credit cycle turns. “There is a universal consciousness that it is a very aggressive market,” says Richard Howell, a managing director at Lehman Brothers, an investment bank. “People are aware there is a lot of risk in the system.”
The repercussions of a fall in credit quality would be felt far beyond the leveraged-loan market. The corollary of the enhanced liquidity provided to borrowers by hedge funds and other institutions is that they too are highly geared. It is easy to imagine their own lenders getting cold feet if credit conditions turn.
Yet one man's misfortune is another's opportunity. Banks and hedge funds are increasing their expertise in the distressed-debt market, where the most pungent credits will eventually end up. Not all of them will be able to benefit if the leveraged-loan market contracts. But the vultures are out there already sharpening their talons for the day when that happens
Economist記事から:日銀が恐れられる理由
Global markets
Carried away
From The Economist print edition
Investors have some good reasons to fear the Bank of Japan
IF YOU were charitable, you would say it had the elegance of simplicity. If you weren't, you'd call it obvious. The “carry trade” is, however, one of the most talked-about trading strategies of recent times.
The favourite subject of the masters of capitalism has much in common with the dinner-table topic of choice in large parts of the English-speaking world: making money from the property market. Both involve borrowing cheaply to buy something with a higher expected return. The carry traders, however, have travelled further than housebuyers in pursuit of lucre. Lately, they have gone to Japan, to borrow yen for next to nothing, convert it into other currencies, and buy anything from emerging-market stocks to gold, property and Kenyan shillings. While it has lasted, the trade has brought an air of old-fashioned derring-do to international capital markets; after all, as long as the yen holds steady or depreciates, it is hard to lose. But the end of Japan's ultra-loose monetary policy, signalled this week, might make the carry trade look a good deal riskier. This gives speculators the willies. Some, theatrically, believe it could cause the “avian flu” of global financial markets.
History suggests it would be wrong to be blasé, but, as yet, the doom-mongering looks overdone. True, betting everything on a low-yielding yen has, in the past, been dangerous. In 1998, after financial crises in South-East Asia and Russia, the dollar plunged against the yen, as speculators unwound the carry trade in a panic. Last December there was a hint of menace when a decline of the dollar against the yen sent shockwaves into markets for such diverse things as the Brazilian real, the New Zealand dollar, gold and crude oil, according to Goldman Sachs.
But even though the Bank of Japan (BoJ) has said policy will be less loose, it is unlikely to raise interest rates fast enough to kill the carry trade. Futures markets forecast that short-term rates will be only 0.25% or so later this year. That is still below what investors can earn elsewhere; and the BoJ might not raise rates at all.
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Data compiled by Tony Norfield, a currency strategist at ABN AMRO, a Dutch bank, indicate that in December the extent of yen borrowing was in any case only one-sixth of what it had been at the peak of carry-trade fever in 1998. Mr Norfield believes that, because it dare not snuff out Japan's nascent recovery, the BoJ will tighten policy only very slowly. “It is premature in the extreme to say the yen will rally big time,” he says.
Even if they carry on regardless, the world's investors still have good reason to be cautious about Japan. First, Japanese corporations' years of deleveraging, which have helped fuel the global liquidity glut, may be ending, says John Richards of Barclays Capital in Tokyo. That may affect Japanese demand for foreign assets, such as American Treasuries.
Second, the BoJ has been responsible, along with America's Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, for an exceptionally long period of unusually accommodative monetary policy. The other two have already begun to tighten. If policy becomes still tighter all round, it is hard to see global bond yields staying at their recent low levels (see chart). And third, investors might ask whether it is worth hunting out high-yielding assets in emerging markets and leveraged credit markets, if they can get attractive returns in safer places.
Such thoughts may already be permeating global bond markets, where yields on ten-year American Treasuries, German bunds and Japanese government bonds have risen in recent weeks. Further rises could be unsettling in a global economy where consumers, governments and many buy-out firms are leveraged to the gills. The BoJ is unlikely to be overly troubled by the interests of those bloated borrowers. Which is why they should be watching the bank's every move.
Economist記事引用：日銀のノーマル化
After the flood
From The Economist print edition
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Japan's monetary policy starts to look almost normal
Get article background
ON MARCH 9th the Bank of Japan (BoJ) declared that the days of its ultra-loose monetary policy were over and that it was winding down its unorthodox practice, begun five years ago, of flooding the banking system with free money. This drastic measure, known as “quantitative easing” was designed to pull Japan out of deflation after the cutting of interest rates to nil had failed to do the trick.
In keeping with modern, open central-banking fashion, the BoJ has also supplied a much-needed peek at the map it will use to steer itself back to a more “normal” monetary policy: one that is conducted by varying interest rates, not the quantity of money. Even so, because Japan is about to embark on an unusual journey, the way ahead is bound to contain surprises.
Evidence of economic recovery has been mounting. GDP grew by 2.8% in 2005 and by 4.2%, year-on-year, in the fourth quarter. Companies' order books are increasingly healthy. Surveys of consumer and business confidence are strong and getting stronger. And after seven long years deflation seems to be gone.
In its bid to beat deflation, the BoJ made a promise: it would keep its ultra-loose policy until inflation was sustainably positive. For some months, the bank has been noting signs of inflation's return. Now prices—at least, measured by the core consumer-price index (CPI)—are rising again. The annual rise in the core CPI (which includes energy but not fresh food) was nil in October and edged up to 0.1% in November and December. January's figure, published on March 3rd, showed a jump to 0.5% (see chart), higher than most people expected. That set everyone thinking that the BoJ would soon move.
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Lately, the BoJ's governor, Toshihiko Fukui, had seemed eager to start turning off the tap. He had faced angry opposition from powerful ministers, who claimed that deflation was not yet dead. They had half a point. If energy were excluded (as it is in most countries), January's core CPI number would have been a mere 0.1%. What is more, measured by the GDP deflator, prices were still falling late last year. Still, the evidence of recovery had done much to soften ministers' warnings. But earlier this week Junichiro Koizumi, the prime minister, himself reminded Mr Fukui how disastrous it would be if the bank ended quantitative easing only to have to reinstate it. Nevertheless, by moving now rather than next month, when most people expected it, the BoJ has shown that it will act as it sees fit.
The bank's first, delicate job is managing a smooth end to quantitative easing. In effect, this policy has consisted of stuffing the reserve accounts that commercial banks must keep at the BoJ with free cash. These accounts contain ¥30 trillion-35 trillion ($260 billion-300 billion), far more than would be required simply to keep overnight interest rates at zero (about ¥6 trillion). The idea was to get banks with shrinking loan books to lend more and so boost the economy.
There is a danger of mopping up that liquidity too fast, especially if prices ease again (as they might, once last year's rise in energy prices works its way out of the figures). But there is also a danger of mopping too slowly, and letting speculation take hold in markets for financial assets and property. The effect of the BoJ's largesse is already plain in the stockmarket, where day traders buying on margin were a big force behind the market's 40% surge last year. The policy has been felt in all sorts of foreign markets too (see article ).
The BoJ also has the government-bond market to worry about. The bank buys bonds in huge amounts: ¥1.2 trillion a month, or two-fifths of all issuance. If it stopped suddenly, yields would shoot up, causing market chaos and a headache for a government whose debt-service consumes 22% of its annual budget. So the BoJ said it would keep buying “for some time”.
The BoJ says it will take a few months to wind down quantitative easing. Even after that, it could be a while before interest rates are raised above zero—their mark since 1999, except for one disastrous increase in 2000. Futures markets expect a quarter-point increase later this year, although some economists think that soft CPI numbers after this spring will cause the bank to wait until 2007.
But how could the bank signal and then manage a smooth transition? It was committed to quantitative easing until core inflation reached zero; but zero is patently too low a target to be much use in setting interest rates. And given the bank's history, there was always the fear that it may raise rates too soon. The BoJ therefore desperately needed a new framework if it was not to replace relative clarity with opaqueness and risk instability in financial markets. It has therefore given unusually detailed guidance about how it will manage expectations on the way to ending its zero interest-rate policy, and even beyond.
First, it promises that there will be no abrupt change in short-term interest rates. Second, the BoJ has laid out a new framework for monetary policy, which spells out more clearly what the bank means by price stability and how it will pursue it.
Those who fear that the central bank is by nature dangerously hawkish will not be reassured by its conceptual definition of price stability as “a state where the change in the price index is zero”. This seems to reflect Mr Fukui's belief that the Japanese have long expected lower inflation than elsewhere. Yet many economists think that mild inflation (say, 2%) is better than zero at allowing relative prices to adjust smoothly. And there is a greater risk at zero inflation of a deflationary demand shock.
On the other hand, the bank's policy board has defined a range within which price stability in the longer term might be said to apply and this, 0-2%, is wider than most had expected. It also refers to “headline” CPI, which includes the prices of fresh food. The board also made it clear that the BoJ would take into account events with a low probability but high economic costs—demand shocks, presumably. And it said it would review the inflation range annually.
The BoJ has thus made its thinking clear. What is not clear yet, however, is whether the creation of the new framework will put an end to a debate under way in policymaking circles about what the bank's mandate should be. This debate has pitted the government's desire for growth (and tax revenues) against the BoJ's desire for price stability. Until now politicians have not been keen that the BoJ decide its own mandate unilaterally. Financial markets will be far happier with the new state of affairs than with the shouting match of the past few months
Economist記事から：ヘッジファンドはどこへ行く？
What's in a name
From The Economist print edition
The label “hedge fund” is getting fuzzier by the day
WHAT exactly is a “hedge fund”? In essence, it is a managed pool of capital for institutional or wealthy individual investors that employs one of various trading strategies in equities, bonds or derivatives, attempting to gain from market inefficiencies and, to some extent, hedge underlying risks.
Hedge funds are often loosely regulated and usually are much less transparent than traditional investment funds. That helps them to trade more stealthily. Funds typically have minimum investment periods, and charge fees based both on funds under management and on performance.
Many experts contend it is a mistake to talk about hedge funds as an asset class; rather, the industry embraces a collection of trading strategies. The appropriate choice of hedging strategy for a particular investor depends largely on its existing portfolio; if, for example, it is heavily invested in equities, it might seek a hedging strategy to offset equity risk. Because of this, discussion of relative returns between hedge-fund strategies can be misleading.
Hedge funds use investment techniques that are usually forbidden for more traditional funds, including “short selling” stock—that is, borrowing shares to sell them in the hope of buying them back later at a lower price—and using big leverage through borrowing.
The favoured strategies tend to change. “Previously the hedge-fund industry was equity driven, but now there is less long/short,” says Oliver Schupp of Credit Suisse/Tremont Index. “Now it's a much more diverse picture with less concentrated exposure.” Some of the most common strategies include:
• Convertible arbitrage—This involves going long in convertible securities (usually shares or bonds) that are exchangeable for a certain number of another form (usually common shares) at a preset price, and simultaneously shorting the underlying equities. This strategy did very well for several years, but has been less effective recently.
• Emerging markets—Investing in securities of companies in emerging economies through the purchase of sovereign or corporate debt and/or shares.
• Fund of funds—Investing in a basket of hedge funds. Some funds of funds focus on single strategies and others pursue multiple strategies. These funds have an added layer of fees.
• Global macro—Investing in shifts between global economies, often using derivatives to speculate on interest-rate or currency moves.
• Market neutral—Typically, equal amounts of capital are invested long and short in the market, attempting to neutralise risk by purchasing undervalued securities and taking short positions in overvalued securities.
EUROPE 2020の警告／全世界的争乱
というホームページがある。
今週のうちに、それは８０%以上の確率でおきるという。
そして、ある出来事が起きた結果、１００%の確率となったと別のところに書いてあった。
以下阿修羅のＨＰ引用
２００６年３月２０～２６日 イラン／米国・・全世界危機を招来!
Europe 2020 (LEAP/E2020)の予測によれば、８０％以上の確率で、今年3月20－26日の週に、国際政
治において大変重大な危機が始まり、それは政治的には1989年の「鉄のカーテン」の廃止、経済的に
は1929年の「世界大恐慌」に匹敵するほどの大きな出来事の始まりとなるだろうということだ。
２００６年の３月の最後の週はたくさんの危機的状況の分岐点となるだろう。
それは大きな危機へ導いていくすべての危機要素を加速させる結果となるだろう。
それは米国やイスラエルによるイランへの軍事介入にも関係なく起こる。
ただ、もしそのような軍事介入があれば大規模危機の可能性は１００％に跳ね上がる、とEurope
2020 (LEAP/E2020)研究所は主張する。
警告は２つの確認のとれる出来事に基づいている。
この危機報告が出された理由は、現在進行中の米・イラン問題の危機の分析から得られたものである
。
一つは、２００６年三月２０日にユーロによる最初のオイル取引所の開設をイランが決定したことで
ある。それは、中東のすべてのオイル産出国が参加できる。
もう一つは２００６年３月から米国の連邦準備制度理事会がM３(世界で使用されているドルの量を示
すもっとも信頼できるデータ)を公表することをストップしたことである。[１]
これらの二つの決定が相まってその危機指数を構成している。
オイルやドルは、第二次世界大戦やソビエトの崩壊の後での新しい世界の歴史的釣り合い秩序をもた
らした原因や結果となってきた。
いくつかの危機が、同時に存在するために、国際システムの中で１０年以上も緊張、弱さ、不釣り合
いを生み出してきた。
世界危機は７つの項目での危機でもたらされるとLEAP/E2020's研究所の研究者や分析官は指摘する。
２００６年３月の終の週に米国やイランの決定が有効になることで危機が最高度に高まることになる
。
それは全面戦争への危機へと発展する。
それは全地球を政治・経済・財政の面で、また多分軍事の面で危機の最終章へと導くことになる。
1. ドルの信頼の崩壊の危機。
2. 米国の財政的不均衡の危機
3. オイル危機
4. 米国の指導的役割の危機
5. アラブイスラム世界の危機
6. 世界的統治の危機
7. ヨーロッパの統治の危機
この危機の予測の全体は、 LEAP/E2020's研究所発行の『the GlobalEurope Anticipation
Bulletin(全ヨーロッパ予測版)』という極秘次期号に詳細に述べられることになっている。