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A few months ago Trian, a hedge fund, revealed that it had built a 6% stake in Ferguson,
幾個月前，一家名為Trian的對沖基金公司透露已在Ferguson建立了6%的股份，
a London-listed company that supplies the building trade.
這是一家提供建筑交易的倫敦上市公司。
Trian is run by Nelson Peltz, who has a long history as the sort of activist investor who buys stakes in firms
Trian由納爾遜·佩爾茨經營，佩爾茨長期以來一直是購買公司股份的激進投資者
and then uses his influence over management to boost the share price. Ferguson makes most of its profits in America.
然后他再利用自己對管理層的影響力來推高股價。Ferguson的大部分利潤來自美國。
Yet its shares traded at a discount to peers listed there. Perhaps something could be done to change this.
然而，該公司的股價卻低于在倫敦上市的同行。也許可以做些什么來改變這種情況。
Sure enough, Ferguson said last month that it would spin off the British part of the business to focus on its American operations.
果不其然，Ferguson上月表示，將脫離英國業務，專注于美國業務。
It also said it was considering moving its stockmarket listing.
其還表示正在考慮轉移股票上市市場。
Should the firm leave, it will be part of a broader trend in Britain: the shrinking supply of equity capital.
如果公司離開，這將是英國更廣泛趨勢的一部分：股權資本供應的萎縮。
America's stock of equity has been getting smaller for a while, because of share buy-backs,
一段時間以來，由于股票回購，新上市公司數量的長期下降，
a secular fall in the number of new listings and the growing incidence of leveraged buy-outs,
以及低利率債務取代股權的杠桿收購越來越普遍，
in which low-interest debt replaces equity.
美國的股票一直在縮水。
Britain is now the leading candidate for such "de-equitisation", says Robert Buckland, of Citigroup.
花旗銀行的羅伯特·巴克蘭德表示，英國現在是這種“去股權化”的主要人選。
The net stock of equity outstanding has fallen by 3% since the start of 2018, faster than in America.
自2018年初，已發行股本凈值下降了3%，比美國下降得還要快。
Cheap debt is a factor. But debt is cheap everywhere.
廉價的債務是一個因素。但債務在任何地方都很廉價。
What makes Britain so ripe for the picking is its culture of accountability to shareholders.
英國對股東負責的企業文化使之成為了一個成熟的選擇。
Activist investors, like Trian, can get results there.
像Trian這樣積極的投資者可以在那里獲得回報。
The backdrop is a shift in the relative costs of debt and equity finance.
背景是債務和股權融資的相對成本發生了變化。
One way to look at this is through the prism of expected returns.
看待這個問題的一種方法是透過預期回報的棱鏡。
A rough-and-ready gauge of expected returns on stocks is the earnings yield—the inverse of the price-to-earnings ratio.
一種簡略的衡量股票預期回報的指標是凈收益率—市盈率的倒數。
It is a measure of real returns: if a burst of inflation raised prices (of assets as well as consumer goods) at a uniform rate,
它是對實際回報的衡量：如果通脹的爆發以統一的速度推高了(資產和消費品的)價格，
the earnings yield would not change. The prospective earnings yield on the FTSE All-Share index of London-listed stocks is 7.6%.
那么收益將不會改變。倫敦上市股票的富時全股票指數的預期收益率為7.6%。
Compare this with a proxy for an expected real return on corporate debt—
與之相比，企業債務預期實際回報率—
the yield on investment-grade bonds less the current inflation rate, which is below zero.
投資級債券的收益率減去當前的通貨膨脹率（低于零）。
The gap between the two is the reward demanded for holding riskier stocks.
兩者之間的差額就是持有更高風險股票所要求的回報。
It is also, by symmetry, a measure of the relative cost to companies of issuing equity versus debt.
根據對稱性，它也是衡量公司發行股票與發行債券的相對成本的一個指標。
This "financing gap" is noticeably wide in Britain.
這種“融資缺口”在英國明顯擴大。
The size of the gap, says Mr Buckland, "offers a potential arbitrage opportunity for private equity and other debt-funded investors".
巴克蘭德稱差額的大小“為私募股權和其他負債經營的投資者提供了潛在的套利機會”。
In other words, there is plenty of scope to replace dear equity capital with cheap debt capital.
換句話說，用廉價的債務資本來取代昂貴的股權資本還有很大的空間。
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