A web-based survey of more than 40 European institutional investors by investment bank Jefferies shows most -- 83 percent of those who responded -- are not expecting a re-opening of the IPO market in the UK and Continental Europe before the middle of 2010.

Only 23 percent of the analysts, portfolio managers and dealers surveyed reckon the IPO market will re-open by the end of this year.

Seems the world is still split on what type of companies will be floated though:

"40% of respondents believe that classic growth stories, similar to the deals priced in the US with their tech themes, will be best received at the early part of the cycle. However, 46% believe that more defensive growth companies will dominate."

Some other interesting tidbits: A third of those polled said they would only buy shares in the IPO of a profitable company, half think GDP growth is a pre-cursor to IPO activity taking off again and liquidity is key, with an expected free float of at least $100 million the starting point.

All food for thought for anyone thinking of floating or spinning off a business. After all, it usually takes months to get them off the ground. 

And are conservation groups moving into the business of giving investment advice?

It seems an unlikely path for environmentalists to take, but this WWF commissioned report warning that failure to take carbon risk into account could knock pension fund returns raises some interesting points.

"Carbon Risks in UK Equity Funds" by Mercer and Trucost "outlines how fund manager complacency on corporate carbon performance could put pension fund assets at risk as carbon-intensive companies face rising carbon costs and their company valuations fall in the short-term in anticipation of future carbon risk".

The report argues that fund managers "could dramatically reduce the carbon footprints of their funds through stock selection without the need to alter sector weightings or their overall investment strategy".

It also encourages them to engage with companies in their portfolios and calls on them to support mandatory reporting requirements for corporate greenhouse gas emissions.

The research says climate change is of "little importance in fund managers' investment decisions", with the main reason cited for this "a lack of confidence in government policies to address greenhouse gas emissions".

WWF wants fund managers to see there are financial incentives for pension funds and other institutional investors to consider carbon risk. If nothing else, it has learned to speak their language.

The European private equity industry today published its response to the proposed Alternative Investment Fund Managers directive that seeks to place controls on the industry.

In what it must hope will be seen as a carefully considered and constructed response to the European Commission’s hastily drafted and ill-thought-out proposed directive, the European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association — the voice for private equity in Europe — calls for the threshold for reporting on its companies’ activities to be lifted to 1 billion euros assets under management from 500 million.

It argues that private equity firms smaller than that specialise in managing small and medium-sized companies and should be subject to national legislation.

EVCA also wants a grandfathering clause introduced so firms existing funds that use no leverage and have no redemption rights (the vast majority of all unlisted private equity funds) would be exempt from the directive. It argues that failing to do this could result in termination of these funds “with disastrous consequences for the industry and its portfolio companies”.

The big question is who in Europe is listening?

Having already gained a surprise concession in the published draft, which lifted the reporting threshold to 500 million euros from an expected level of 250 million euros, private equity may be seen as pushing its luck by asking for further leeway.

While the Socialists lost ground to the Conservative right in the recent European Parliament elections, it would be a mistake to think that the left wing coalition leader Poul Nyrup Rasmussen will be any less strident in his call for stringent legislation on private equity and hedge funds alike. The right wing Governments in France and Germany have been just as loud in their demands for legislating of the industries.

Private equity might have been hoping for support from the UK, home to most of Europe’s largest funds, but the decision of the British Conservative party to step outside of the main right wing coalition in Europe will weaken the voice in its favour. A feeble British Labour Government and a UK Treasury with bigger fish to fry does not leave private equity with many influential friends.

EVCA’s response to the proposed directive is its opening shot in the whole legislative process which is likely to take at least one year, but it must have hoped for a warmer reception for its counter-proposals.

Financial markets might be in distress and stocks are falling through the floor, but according to James Montier, global strategist at Societe Generale, we are not in the final stage of bubble burst yet. For one thing, the Financial Times is still too big.

At a fund managers conference in London today, Montier — a renowned bear — noted a thesis by economists Hyman Minsky and Charles Kindleberger that bubbles go through five stages — displacement, credit creation, euphoria, critical stage/financial distress and revulsion.

Currently, he says, financial markets are going through the critical/distress stage but we are not in revulsion yet.

“In revulsion, the Financial Times will be three pages long and we will all be ashamed to be working in finance. Stocks will be unambiguously cheap,” he told a group of financial professionals.

Every month, the financial services company State Street studies the trillions of dollars in institutional investor money it looks after as custodian and tries to gauge where things stand. Over the years, it has come up with a map consisting of five different regimes, or moods, to reflect this. They range from the bullish “Liquidity Abounds” in which investors buy equities and focus on growth, to the uber-risk averse “Riot Point”.

Guess what? Investors moved into “Riot Point” last month after flipping about for four months in the slightly less bearish but still risk averse “Safety First” regime. This essentially means that they gave up in October – which is not a particularly stunning finding given that many stock markets had their worst performance in decades.

So now comes the bad news. In the 11 years State Street has been drawing its map, the longest period of risk aversion as measured by investors being in “Riot Point” or “Safety First” was the nine months between February and October 2001. This almost exactly coincided with the then-U.S. recession.

State Street gently points out that the U.S. economy has yet to formally enter recession this time.

So star hedge fund manager Greg Coffey has opted to join established firm Moore Capital.

In April, when high-performing, high-earning Coffey resigned from GLG, the market was awash with rumours that he wanted to start up his own firm, pulling in billions from investors.

However, times have changed in the hedge fund industry.

The average fund is down nearly 20 percent so far this year, according to Hedge Fund Research’s HFRX index, while emerging markets funds have taken a particular battering as markets such as Russia and China have fallen.

Fund of funds managers say that top funds that were once able to turn investors away are now open again as investors across the industry withdraw their assets.

So perhaps for Coffey, who forfeited a bonus reportedly worth around $250 million when he resigned from GLG, a start-up has just become too risky for now.

If the shrinkage of the hedge fund industry is giving someone as well-regarded as Coffey reason to think again, then for those without a strong track record times could be very tough indeed.

Every month, Merrill Lynch asks a few hundred fund managers around the world what they think of the state of things. Not surprisingly, this month’s survey is probably the gloomiest yet. Everyone, says Gary Baker, the strategist charged with explaining the poll, is a macro bear suffering from hyper risk-aversion.

Of particular note for readers of Macroscope this time is the finding that 84 percent of fund managers, more than four in five, say it is likely that the global economy will experience recession over the next 12 months. It is actually possible that the figure is greater than that, given the question’s definition of recession as two quarters of negative real GDP growth. That definition is fine for countries, but for the global economy it is a bit nebulous.

At least one should hope so. According to the International Monetary Fund, global GDP should end up having grown 3.9 percent at the end of this year and drop to 3.0 percent in 2009. Blistering growth in places like China may cool, but is still likely to keep the world economy in growth. So many fund managers may have been considering a less specific definition of global recession. The IMF informally used to think of it as below 3 percent growth, for example, but is not so keen on this now.

Whatever the definition, Merrill’s fund managers are pretty clear about one thing - the times have changed. Each month, their thoughts on where we are in the economic cycle are plotted on a kind of clock, where 12 is mid-cycle and 6 is recession. Until January this year, they spent 3-1/2 years between 1 o’clock and 2 o’clock — essentially saying the economy was just past mid-cycle. The clock has ticked rapidly since January and is now at half past five.

All this begs a number of questions. 1) Are the fund managers right about recession, or are they just overreacting to massive losses on stocks markets? 2) Can Chinese growth continue to shore up the world’s? 3) If we are at 5:30, how long before the clock ticks to 6:35 and enters a new upward economic cycle?