From dredmond at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Fri Sep 17 15:53:41 1999
> Germany and the other continental European countries with
> bank-centered systems are evolving in the stock direction,
> and the creation of the euro will almost certainly promote this.
Are they, really? A few EU firms may be going public, but
massive amounts of stock seems to be vanishing, the good
old-fashioned way -- via humongous mergers.
Don't forget that, despite the "IPO mania" that you might read about, this is also the case in the US. The available stock ("float") is shrinking due to mergers and buybacks *much* faster than it's increasing due to IPOs and spinouts.
/jordan