Capital Markets Depth & Development

1171 · 855 years ago

The Republic of Venice converted forced loans from citizens into tradable government debt

The prestiti system paid interest to citizens compelled to lend the state money to fund its wars, and claims on that interest were bought and sold among Venetians, establishing the basic mechanics of the sovereign bond centuries before Europe's national debt markets existed.

1602 · 424 years ago

The Dutch East India Company issued the first tradable public shares

Investors bought certificates representing part-ownership of the company's voyages, and trading in them at Amsterdam created the world's first continuous secondary market in equity, a template later copied by every stock exchange founded since.

1792 · 234 years ago

Twenty-four New York brokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement

Their pact to trade securities among themselves on fixed commission, made under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street, became the founding document of what grew into the New York Stock Exchange.

1929 · 97 years ago

The Wall Street Crash ended the decade's equity boom and speculative margin lending

Share prices fell by around 90 per cent from their peak over the following three years, wiping out household savings and pushing lawmakers toward the disclosure and anti-fraud rules that still govern how companies raise money from the public.

• The US Securities and Exchange Commission was created to police the new rules

20th century · 126 years ago

Corporate finance relied chiefly on bank loans rather than market borrowing

Through most of the twentieth century, company finance other than share issues was raised predominantly through bank lending. This left capital markets a secondary channel for corporate long-term funding, with banks acting as intermediaries between savers and firms.

1980 · 46 years ago

Large creditworthy companies began disintermediating banks by borrowing directly on capital markets

From around 1980 an ongoing trend of disintermediation set in, as large and creditworthy firms found they paid less interest by borrowing directly from capital markets than from banks. This shifted the balance of long-term corporate finance towards bond and equity issuance.

1986 · 40 years ago

The City of London's Big Bang deregulated Britain's securities markets overnight

Abolishing fixed commissions and opening exchange membership to foreign and non-member firms, the reform moved trading onto screens instead of the floor and turned London into the leading centre for international bond and equity dealing.

1990 · 36 years ago

China reopened stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen

Closed since the 1949 revolution, the reconstituted exchanges gave state enterprises a route to raise equity capital for the first time in decades, beginning the build-out of what is now one of the world's largest stock and bond markets.

1997 · 29 years ago

The Asian financial crisis exposed the fragility of emerging bond and equity markets

Currency collapses in Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea triggered capital flight from regional stock and bond markets, forcing IMF-led rescues and prompting a generation of emerging economies to build larger foreign exchange reserves and deeper local-currency bond markets.

1997 · 29 years ago

Governments of larger nations began selling bonds directly online, bypassing investment banks

Where governments had traditionally used investment banks to organise bond sales, from 1997 it became increasingly common for larger states to make bonds directly available for purchase online. Platforms such as the US TreasuryDirect allow citizens to buy bonds in the primary market, though individual sales remain a small fraction of total volume.

2000 · 26 years ago

The dot-com crash wiped out most of the decade's technology listings

The Nasdaq lost around three-quarters of its value over the following two years as speculative internet-company valuations collapsed, closing the IPO window for years and reshaping how equity markets priced unprofitable growth companies.

2002 · 24 years ago

Malaysia issued the first global sovereign sukuk

The $600 million Islamic bond, structured to avoid interest payments through an underlying asset arrangement, opened international capital markets to sharia-compliant government borrowing and seeded a sukuk market now worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

2008 · 18 years ago

The collapse of Lehman Brothers froze global capital markets

The bankruptcy of a major US investment bank triggered a collapse in bond and equity issuance worldwide, forced emergency central bank intervention, and led governments to rewrite securities and derivatives regulation for the following decade.

2008 · 18 years ago

Central banks introduced quantitative easing, suppressing government bond yields

Following the 2008 financial crisis, quantitative easing further reduced the ability of private actors to push up the yields of government bonds. The effect applied to countries whose central banks could conduct substantial open market operations, altering the balance of power between sovereign borrowers and bond markets.

20th–21st century

Internet brokerage made market accounts cheap and widely accessible to individuals

In the twentieth century only a few wealthy individuals could afford an account with a broker, but browser-based platforms later made accounts much cheaper and accessible over the internet. Private companies now provide systems allowing individuals to buy shares and sometimes bonds in secondary markets, modestly raising retail participation.

21st century

Several governments shifted borrowing into long-dated bonds to reduce market pressure

In the twenty-first century a number of governments sought to lock in as much of their borrowing as possible at long maturities. Longer-dated issuance reduced their exposure to short-term refinancing pressure from bond markets.

June 2026 · 2 months ago

US capital markets delivered record first-half IPO proceeds

Initial public offerings raised $251 billion in the first half of the year, led by Alphabet's $85 billion equity raise and SpaceX's $86.2 billion offering, the largest IPO on record, while corporate bond issuance reached $1.23 trillion through May, up 21 per cent on the year before.

June 2026 · 2 months ago

Hong Kong's stock exchange posted its strongest first half for listings in five years

IPOs raised HK$209.9 billion across 85 deals in the first half of 2026, up 92 per cent on the same period a year earlier, as 24 dual mainland-Hong Kong listings and 13 specialist technology offerings already exceeded their full-year 2025 totals.

February 2026 · 6 months ago

Brazil's B3 exchange climbed to record highs

The Ibovespa index reached an all-time high of 192,624 points, up more than 40% over twelve months, as the exchange's roughly 358 listed companies carried a combined market capitalisation of around $870 billion.

February 2026 · 6 months ago

Saudi Arabia opened the Tadawul to all foreign investors

The Capital Market Authority scrapped the qualified foreign investor regime and its $500 million asset threshold from 1 February, removing the last barrier to direct retail and institutional access and prompting the strongest month of foreign buying since 2022.

February 2026 · 6 months ago

Sub-Saharan African governments returned to international bond markets at their fastest pace since 2013

Kenya, Ivory Coast and other issuers raised almost $6 billion in a few weeks, led by Kenya's $2.25 billion dual-tranche eurobond priced to fund a buyback of its 2028 and 2032 notes, as investor appetite for African sovereign risk recovered.

• Ivory Coast drew the heaviest demand of the wave
• Nigeria also tapped the market

2026 to date · this year

Vietnam eased foreign access to its stock market

New rules introduced a global broker model that removes the requirement for foreign institutions to hold a local trading account or pre-fund purchases, part of a wider financial market overhaul intended to help the bourse win an emerging-market upgrade.

2026 to date · this year

China's panda bond market drew record foreign issuance

Yuan-denominated bond sales by foreign borrowers reached RMB170.2 billion in the year to date, 1.7 times the same period in 2025, taking outstanding issuance past RMB500 billion as the foreign share of new deals climbed from 27% in 2023 to 41%.

• Kazakhstan and Pakistan joined Western banks as issuers

2026 to date · this year

India's IPO market cooled after two record years

Initial public offerings raised about $5.78 billion so far in 2026, down from $7.32 billion in the same period of 2025, as issuers cut deal sizes and accepted lower valuations after India's share of Asia-Pacific equity capital markets volume reached 20% the previous year.

November 2025 · 9 months ago

Hong Kong's government issued the world's largest digital bond

The HK$10 billion multi-currency digital green bond was the first globally to settle using tokenised central bank money, e-HKD and e-CNY, and drew strong demand from institutional investors making their first digital bond purchase.

2025 · last year

India's securities regulator banned a major trading firm over index manipulation

The Securities and Exchange Board of India barred Jane Street from Indian markets over an alleged ₹4,843 crore scheme to move Bank Nifty options prices through large trades in the underlying stocks, part of a wider crackdown that has imposed multi-year market bans on other operators.

• The regulator moved to overhaul short-selling rules

2012 · 14 years ago

Hedge funds came to dominate short-term trading on major stock exchanges

A 2012 Financial Times article reported that hedge funds were making most of the short-term trades across large sections of the capital markets, including the UK and US stock exchanges. Increasingly trading with each other rather than with less sophisticated investors, they found it harder to sustain historically high returns.

2009 · 17 years ago

Capital markets overtook bank lending as the leading source of long-term finance

According to the Financial Times, capital markets surpassed bank lending as the principal source of long-term finance in 2009. The shift reflected heightened risk aversion and tighter bank regulation following the 2008 financial crisis.