The syndicated loan and asset-backed and mortgage-backed security markets, which once accounted for nearly 60% of capital-raising globally, have shrunk dramatically and may well never return to peak levels. Letting some air out of the capital markets bubble was necessary, but new capital-raising is now at levels too low to sustain adequate economic growth. How that gap is filled has profound implications for the investment banking industry.

This is the conclusion reached from an analysis of ten years of data on global capital-raising volumes from Dealogic: IPOs, secondary equity offerings, convertible bonds, corporate bonds, supra-national and agency offerings, covered bonds, asset-backed securities, and bank loans -- the major forms of capital-raising that are widely tracked.