Global equity market issuance jumped up sharply in the first quarter, but debt issuance slipped a bit, according to quarterly data from Thomson Reuters.

The firm reported that equity market activity totalled US$167.5 billion for first quarter, a 138% increase over the same period in 2009 when new issuance totaled US$70.4 billion.

The market for global initial public offerings saw its strongest opening quarter for new listings since the first quarter of 2000, it reports. For the first quarter of 2010, global IPO volume totaled US$46.4 billion, a huge jump from the first quarter of 2009 when issuance totaled just US$1.4 billion. Issuers from Brazil, Russia, India and China have raised US$22.8 billion so far this year, accounting for 49% of IPO volume, it says.

The financial sector accounted for 34% of the overall volume in equity capital markets, followed by materials (13%), energy and power (13%), and industrials (12%).

The firm also reported that global debt capital markets activity totaled US$1.5 trillion during the first quarter, this was a 10% decrease over last year when volume reached US$1.7 trillion. The Asia Pacific region was the only area to register an increase in debt capital markets activity, albeit up just 2% from 2009.

However, the volume of global corporate high yield debt reached US$75.5 billion during the quarter, setting a new quarterly record for corporate high yield debt issuance. Issuers in the materials, financials, industrials and telecommunications sectors accounted for just over 60% of this quarter’s high yield corporate volume, it says.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch led the debt underwriting league tables, with 8.6% of the market. JP Morgan led equity market underwriters for the second consecutive year with US$14.8 billion in proceeds from 82 issues. RBC Capital Markets ranked 16th in equities and 15th in debt, up from 19th place in the underwriting league tables last year; and TD Securities took 20th place in equities and 21st in debt underwriting, up from 26th.

IE