Breakfast briefing: Tuesday, February 28 (Update)

"The markets were volatile this year. There were times when IPOs got launched but didn't get done, and there were also fewer rights offerings," said Achintya Mangla, head of ECM in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at JP Morgan <JPM.N>, which topped the league table for global equity offerings and IPOs

MarketWrap: US stocks ended slightly higher on Monday and the Dow closed at a record high for a 12th straight session, as President Donald Trump said he would make a "big" infrastructure statement on Tuesday. - Reuters

The DJIA was up 15.68 points, or 0.08%, to close at 20,837.44, the S&P 500 gained 2.39 points, or 0.10%, to 2,369.73 and the Nasdaq added 16.59 points, or 0.28%, to 5,861.90.

Forex summary

*The ringgit lost 0.15% to 4.4450 per US$

*It lost 0.20% to 4.7045 versus euro

*Down 0.37% to 5.5265 per pound sterling

*Down 0.22% to 3.1624 per Singapore dollar

*0.06% lower to 3.4125 per Aussie

*0.24% at 3.9402 per 100 yen

Energy

Oil prices ended little changed on Monday as the prospect for US crude production to continue growing offset reports of high compliance to the Opec production cut agreement and record bullish bets that prices would rise further. On its penultimate day as the front-month contract, Brent futures for April delivery lost six cents, or 0.1%, to settle at US$55.93 a barrel. - Reuters

Top foreign stories

JPMorgan, Microsoft, Intel and others form new blockchain alliance: JPMorgan Chase & Co, Microsoft Corp, Intel Corp and more than two dozen other companies have teamed up to develop standards and technology to make it easier for enterprises to use blockchain code Ethereum in the latest push by large firms to move toward distributed ledger systems. - Reuters

US core capital goods orders fall: New orders for key US-made capital goods unexpectedly fell in January after three straight months of strong gains, but did little to change views that manufacturing was recovering from a prolonged downturn amid rising commodity prices. The Commerce Department said on Monday that non-defence capital goods orders excluding aircraft, a closely watched proxy for business spending plans, dropped 0.4% after an upwardly revised 1.1% increase in December. - Reuters

Satellite operators OneWeb, Intelsat plan conditional merger: OneWeb Ltd, a US satellite venture backed by SoftBank Group Corp, and debt-laden satellite operator Intelsat SA plan to merge in a deal that could be announced as soon as late Monday, according to people briefed on the plans. - Reuters