Bric countries are continuing to demonstrate their importance to investment banks. In a weekly scorecard compiled by Thomson Reuters today, a burst of capital raising and dealmaking in the four emerging markets has led to a few year-to-date records being broken.

So far this year, the volume of global initial public offerings has hit $24bn - which is a 20% increase on last year and the highest on record, Thomson Reuters found. This is despite the fact that there has been muted activity in Europe, accounting for just 8.6% of the global share of flotations.