Citigroup and Bank of NY-Mellon released a semi-annual reports on the Depositary Receipts market in which these big players highlighted:

• The number of available DR programs globallly rose to 3,214 from 3,096 a year ago, from 76 different countries.

• Depositary Receipts H1 trading volumes rose 6% to 79.3 bn shares, versus 74.5 bn in H1 2009. Trading value rose by $547 bn or 4.3% to $1.8 trillion as of June 30.

• Capital raisings increased 133% to $3 billion; IPOs continued to rebound from 2009 levels and accounted for 54% of total H1 capital raising. Almost all the IPOs were from BRIC countries, except for Brazil.

• While 90% of US trading was in listed ADRs on the big board and the Nasdaq, the depositaries mainly created new unsponsored Depositary Receipts listed over the counter. Only one sponsored ADR, for Britvic, was not listed on an exchange. Companies sponsoring previously unsponsored ADRs included Denmark’s Carlsberg and Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical.

•Following the US 2008 rule change, 951 new unsponsored ADR programs were established, 79 of them in H1 of this year. There had been only 177 unsponsored ADR programs when the SEC reopened the market. The total now is therefore 1128 programs run by Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and the leader, Bank of NY-Mellon. Nine programs are Global Depositary Receipts mainly traded in London, not in the USA. Citi’s proprietary data shows that market cap of unsponsored DR programs rose 19% year over year mostly from French, Chinese, German, and Australian DR programs, while those from Denmark and Japan declined. BNY-Mellon acted as structural advisor for the future Indian depositary receipt program.

• British DR trading rose sharply because of BP which accounted for 3.8 bn ADRs traded in H1 this year vs 979 mn in H1 2009 and 442 mn in H1 2008 according to Citi.

• Total U.S. investment in non-US equities in Q1 2010 was $4.2 trillion, up 63% from Q1 2009. Data for Q2 are not yet compiled.

*Citi’s “Liquid DR Index” underperformed the S&P 500 in H1. Please do compare this with the www.Global-Investing.com portfolio’s performance on closed positions which is public.