ABSTRACT
The participation of the foreign banks, the consortium banks, the British overseas banks and the merchant and clearing banks soon gave the Euromarkets a firm base. The term 'Eurodollar' is misleading. The currencies used in this particular market are confined neither to dollars nor to Europe, but both dollars and Europe were intimately concerned with the way the market developed. It is now in reality a multi-currency market which supplies credit to borrowers world-wide. The Eurobond market owes much to the development of the whole Eurocurrency market: the same factors stimulated both. But Eurobonds have their own historical roots too. They are the modern equivalent of the bonds issued by foreign governments and municipalities and sold in several European financial centres simultaneously in the nineteenth century. The main feature of a Eurobond is that it is for a stated period, usually between five and fifteen years, and carries a fixed rate of interest.
