The marketing of securities is an essential link in the mechanism that transfers capital funds from savers to users. The transfer may involve intermediaries such as savings banks, insurance companies, or investment trusts. The ultimate user of the funds may be a corporation or any of the various levels of government from municipalities to national states.

The growth of public debt throughout the world has made governments increasingly important participants in the markets for new securities. They have had to develop financing techniques with careful attention to their influence on the markets for nongovernmental securities. The treasuries must carefully study interest rates, yield patterns, terms of financing, and the distribution of holdings among investors.

Local governments are usually subject to various statutory restrictions that must be carefully observed when offering a new issue for sale. Local government bonds are distributed through investment bankers who buy them and reoffer them to the public at higher prices and correspondingly lower yields. Sometimes the terms of the offer are negotiated. In the United States, however, a more prevalent means of selling state and local bonds is through competitive bidding, in which the issuer announces a contemplated offering of bonds for a designated amount, with specified maturity dates, and for certain purposes. Syndicates of investment bankers are formed to bid on the issue, and the award is made to the group providing the most favourable terms. The winning syndicate then reoffers the bonds to the public at prices carefully tailored to be competitive with comparable obligations already on the market and to provide a suitable profit margin.

The financial manager of a company requiring additional funds has a number of alternative courses of action open to him. He may do all of his financing through commercial banks by means of loans and revolving credit arrangements that, in essence, are formalized lines of credit. Or, he may prefer to raise capital through the sale of securities. If he chooses to do the latter, he may undertake a private sale with an institutional investor such as an insurance company, permitting him to avoid both the complicated procedures of a public distribution and the risks of unsettled market conditions. On the other hand, a private placement of this sort deprives the issuer of the favourable publicity flowing from a successful public offering; it may not afford sufficient resources for very large firms with continuing demands for capital; and it involves rather restrictive legal requirements.

A company that elects to float its securities publicly in the capital market will ordinarily utilize the services of an investment banker. The investment banker may buy the securities from the issuer and seek a profit by selling them at a higher price to the public, thereby assuming the market risks. If the issue is large, the originating investment banker may invite other houses to join with him in purchasing the issue from the company, while to facilitate disposal he may form a selling group to take over the issue from the buying firms for resale to the public. In lieu of buying the securities from the issuer, the investment banker may act as an agent and receive a commission on the amount sold. If the issuer negotiates the selection of an investment banker, the banker will serve as financial counsel and offer advice on the timing and terms of the new issue. If the selection is by competitive bidding, the relationship is likely to be more impersonal.

An accepted principle of modern finance is that investors are entitled to knowledge about the issuer in order to appraise the quality of the securities offered. A number of countries now require issuers to file registration statements and provide written prospectuses.

The security markets of Europe do not have the aggressive investment-banking machinery developed in the United States. European commercial banks, on the other hand, play a much more important role in financing the needs of industry than do commercial banks in the United States and Great Britain.

In the 1960s, a number of industrial nations faced increasing difficulties in meeting their financing needs through local capital markets. Several issuers began to float securities that were payable in any of 17 different European currencies. This marked what might be called the beginning of an “international securities” market. Efforts were also made to issue bonds on a parallel basis in different countries with each portion denominated in the currency of the country in which it was sold. For various legal and technical reasons, these methods did not attract a wide following.

Another factor that hastened the growth of a European securities market was the balance of payments problem confronting the United States in the 1960s. Certain legislative enactments substantially shut the capital market of the U.S. to foreign issuers; and other restraints were imposed on foreign lending by United States financial institutions and on direct foreign investment by United States corporations. As a result, a number of multinational corporations headquartered in the United States were forced to seek financing in overseas securities markets for the expanding business of their foreign subsidiaries. United States and foreign investment bankers joined in syndicates to float these securities. The process was facilitated by the growth of an international market in Eurodollars, representing claims on dollars deposited in European banks. The bulk of the new bonds offered abroad were denominated in Eurodollars.

During the period 1957–65, when this new European market came into being, the volume of foreign bonds issued publicly rose from $492,600,000 to $1,489,500,000. The principal and most consistent borrowers were in Canada, Australia, Japan, Norway, Israel, Denmark, and New Zealand. In all of these countries, the major borrower was the national government, except in Canada, where the political subdivisions were the major borrowers. In West Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, the only borrowers in international markets were private units.