????華爾街可能面臨著新的債券問題。

????上周晚些時候，高盛（Goldman Sachs）表示，監管部門正在對它如何分配、交易債券進行調查。有報道稱，監管機構還瞄上了花旗集團（Citigroup）和華爾街其他公司。調查的焦點在于這些銀行最初發行債券時如何決定誰能成為買家。

????以去年威瑞森（Verizon）大規模發債為例。華爾街公司得到的認購資金為1000億美元，而威瑞森的發行額為490億美元，其中約四分之一債券由兩家公司購得，它們是債券基金領域的巨無霸貝萊德（BlackRock）和太平洋投資管理公司（Pimco）。有些人因此受到了刺激，這可以理解。看來美國證監會（SEC）正在調查的就是這個問題，其他監管機構可能也在這樣做。

????但這真的是監管部門的工作嗎？華爾街兩大債券公司占據了這只熱門債券的很大一部分，這一點并不讓人意外。這兩家公司的規模意味著它們在支付給華爾街的傭金中占了很大的比重。就連一些受到不公平待遇的經理人似乎也能接受這種情況：

????Bryn Mawr Trust Co.管理著14億美元固定收益資產，該公司投資經理兼交易員瑪麗?塔爾伯特說，她認購了約150萬美元的威瑞森債券，但都沒有中簽。瑪麗表示，自己對較大的基金拿到較多的債券沒有任何異議，因為這就是資本市場的運作方式。

????她說：“我在這一行干了這么長時間，基本上已經習慣了。”

????但這里可能還有其他問題。

????大多數公司發行債券的第一步都是公布債券募集說明書，其中包括發行公司的信息以及信用評級。隨后，投行方面會給貝萊德和太平洋投資管理公司等債券投資機構打電話或者發送電子郵件，詢問后者會買多少，會出什么樣的價格（以及希望收益率達到怎樣的水平）。接下來，承銷商會根據這些信息給債券定價。在外界看來，他們應該完成債券發行公司的融資目標，同時盡可能降低債券的利率。

????到現在，大家可能懷疑問題出在他們沒有按這樣的程序來操作。兩年前，巴克萊（Barclays）信貸研究團隊在杰夫?梅利的帶領下對投資級公司債的發行情況進行了研究。他們發現，和首次發行的股票一樣，債券上市當天往往也會大幅上漲。

????平均而言，從發行到納入巴克萊綜合債券指數（Barclays Aggregate Bond index），新發行債券的價格漲幅比同類現有債券高0.14個百分點，把這些債券納入這個指數的時間都是在它們上市當月的最后一天。此外，超過一半的價格增長都出現在第一天。也就是說，許多沒有中簽的投資者都非常愿意用超過初始發行價的水平購買這些債券。研究咨詢及資產管理機構TF Market Advisors創始人彼得?切爾看來也進行過類似的研究，而且得出了類似的結論。

????巴克萊信貸研究團隊指出，如果某位債券投資經理每次都能中簽，他的業績增速就有望比同行高1.05個百分點。考慮到目前公司債市場的平均收益率為3%左右，這已經是一個相當大的優勢。所有這些都表明，華爾街是在把一部分客戶的資金裝進另一部分客戶的口袋。

????Wall Street may have a new debt problem.

????Late last week, Goldman Sachs (GS) disclosed that regulators are probing how it allocates and trades bonds. Citigroup (C) is reportedly in regulators' crosshairs as well, along with the rest of Wall Street. At issue is how banks decide who gets to buy into bonds when they are initially offered.

????Take last year's massive Verizon deal (VZ). Wall Street dealers received orders for $100 billion in bonds. Verizon sold $49 billion, with about a quarter of that debt going to two firms, bond-fund behemoths BlackRock (BLK) and Pimco. Understandably, some feathers were ruffled. And this appears to be what the Securities and Exchange Commission and potentially other regulators are looking into.

????But is this really a job for regulators? It's not surprising that a good chunk of a hot deal would go to Wall Street's two bond powerhouses. Their size means they pay a large percentage of Wall Street's commission. And even some of those unfairly treated managers seem to accept the situation:

????Mary Talbutt, portfolio manager and trader at Bryn Mawr Trust Co., which oversees about $1.4 billion in fixed-income assets, said she put in an order for about $1.5 million of Verizon bonds but didn't receive any. She said she didn't really have a problem that larger funds got more bonds, noting that is just how capital markets work.

????"I've been doing this for so long that you just kind of get used to it," she said.

????But there could be something else at play here.

????Most bond deals start with the distribution of an offering document, which includes info about the selling company and a credit rating. Bankers then call up or e-mail bond managers, like BlackRock or Pimco, and ask them how much they would buy and what they would pay (or what yield they are looking to get). Underwriters then use that information to determine how to price the deal, you would assume at the lowest interest rate they can get that will allow them to place all the debt that the company is hoping to raise.

????The problem, as you may have suspected by now, is that it doesn't go down that way. Two years ago, Barclays' credit research team, headed by Jeff Meli, took a look at investment grade corporate bond offerings and found that, like IPOs, bond deals tend to have pops. On average, the price of a newly issued bond rises 0.14 percentage points more than similar existing bonds between the time it is first sold to when it's added to the Barclays Aggregate Bond index, which happens on the last day of the month in which the deal came to market. What's more, more than half of the price increase happens on the first day. That means there are a whole bunch of investors not getting a piece of bond deals that would be more than willing to pay more than the initial asking price. Peter Tchir at TF Market Advisors appears to have done some similar research getting similar results.

????A bond manager who is able to get in on every new issue could expect to outperform his rivals by 1.05 percentage points, the Barclays authors assert. Considering the average yield in the corporate bond market is around 3% these days, that advantage is sizable. All of this suggests that Wall Street is paying off one client with money from another. Corporations sold $1.1 trillion in investment grade bond deals in 2013. That means bond investors who got first access to these deals pocketed nearly $12 billion that could have stayed in the accounts of borrowers, creating a pot of money that potentially Wall Street is rationing out to its best customers presumably in return for more trades later.