Rights issues turn back to the future.

Financial News, September, 2002

Byline: William Wright

Bankers in the European equity capital markets are going back to the future in their search for ways of raising equity in the most bearish and volatile markets in more than a decade. The new big thing in the European new issue market this year is one of the oldest tools in the box: the humble rights issue.Rights issues have been around in their current form since at least the early 1950s, long before many of the bankers running them today were born. This is also long before the arrival of American imports like bookbuilding, its super-charged offspring accelerated bookbuilding, and jargon such as greenshoes and clawbacks.

In the bull market of the 1990s, rights issues were an unfashionable hangover from a stuffy and bygone age....

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