The signs of recovering demand for securities borrowing are still shaky. According to a Thomson Reuters story last week, "Cross-border merger activity rose to $96.6 billion for year-to-date 2011, up 59% from this time last year and the strongest start for cross-border M&A since 2008."
But of course, when it comes to short selling the news isn't always good, or in fact even clear. Craig McGlashan wrote a very good article in Fundamentals magazine pointing out the issues and confusion amongst the people proposing regulations
There have been a number of stories outlining closed or covered shorts recently, with stories getting more coverage than Netflix. Two fund managers give their explanation for closing out their position on Netflix here in an article from SeekingAlpha.com and it highlights the challenges of sound research and analysis not always being enough to guarantee success.
Given this mixed view, it is interesting to see what is happening with investment into securities lending. In my previous post I asked three questions about the technology spending outlook for 2011.
The good news is that despite a very difficult P&L environment in 2010, 55% of respondents have said their IT budgets have increased for this year. Half the people that answered indicated that their primary development target is for major infrastructure initiatives. My feeling here is that some things were delayed or pushed into this year from last. Finally, 63% of respondents told us that their technology developments were targetted at keeping them in line with their competition. You can click on the box below to expand the charts.
