NEW YORK: For the first time since World War II, bankers on Wall Street are on the verge of earning more from initial public offerings in Europe than in the United States.

While American underwriters continue to charge double the going rate for fees on European initial public offerings, the total amount of money raised in Europe so far this year is 78 percent greater than the value of U.S. offerings.

As a result, the historic gap in earnings by banks in the two markets is barely perceptible: more than $1.1 billion in fees from IPOs in Europe, compared with about $1.4 billion from initial sales on American stock exchanges. In 2002, investment banks earned five times as much taking companies public in the United States as they did in Europe.

"The move towards favoring London is here to stay," said Viswas Raghavan, JPMorgan Chase's London-based head of capital markets for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. "There's sufficient liquidity in our time zone without having to rely on U.S. investors for demand. London is rapidly becoming a new Big Board."

Bankers in Europe are profiting from a torrent of equity sales by Russian banks, Norwegian oil and gas companies and British property developers. The deluge is almost certain to continue this year as companies ranging from Dong Energy in Denmark to PIK Group in Russia line up to sell shares in buoyant equity markets.

IPOs in Europe have raised $37.8 billion so far this year, exceeding the $21.2 billion of stock sold on U.S. exchanges, as state-controlled companies including the Russian bank VTB Group and Aéroports de Paris, operator of the Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports, issued shares for the first time.

"It's the broadest-based business I have ever seen," said Michael Lavelle, the London-based head of Citigroup's European equity capital markets unit. "The size and depth of the European economies is such that we believe this isn't just a bull-market phenomenon."

While money is being raised at a record pace in Europe and Asia, public offerings in the United States have not returned to levels reached at the height of dot-com euphoria in 1999. Fourteen of the world's 15 biggest IPOs this year were listed outside of the United States. Non-U.S. issuers have been wary of listing in New York because of stricter financial-reporting requirements imposed by the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the U.S. dollar's 30 percent drop in the past five years.

U.S. bankers are not making it any easier.

They have held the average fee steady at about 6.7 percent of the amount of the IPO since 2002, while European bankers charge about 3.2 percent, Bloomberg data show.

Malon Wilkus, chief executive of American Capital Strategies in Bethesda, Maryland, said that the high costs of listing in the United States and regulatory obstacles were prompting him to consider selling shares in London for one of the companies he holds as an investment.

"We think this will be a very dynamic company, but it can't today go public in the U.S., and it can in London with lower fees," Wilkus said.

Catalytic Solutions, a maker of automobile parts in Oxnard, California, and Napo Pharmaceuticals, a San Francisco-based drug maker, both listed on London exchanges last year. The New York-based buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts raised $5 billion a year ago for its KKR Private Equity Investors fund on the Amsterdam exchange.

Fees in Europe range from 1 percent on Sports Direct International's $1.8 billion IPO to 5.4 percent for Biancamano, which raised $51.7 million in March.

By comparison, 71 of the 111 initial stock sales on U.S. exchanges this year paid commissions of 7 percent or more.

The European market has more than twice the number of companies competing for business, giving executives the leverage to cherry-pick bankers and drive down prices. At least 95 firms played a role in arranging IPOs in Europe this year, compared with 41 in the United States.

Henry Paulson Jr., the U.S. Treasury Secretary, has called for streamlining securities rules and curbing shareholder lawsuits to increase competition with less regulated overseas markets.

Unless such changes are made, the United States will probably lose its place as the world's leading financial center in a decade, according to a report released in January by Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City..

"The fact that the number of IPOs here is limited, despite the well-being of the economy, suggests there is some friction in the capital market," said Luigi Zingales, a finance professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and a member of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, a group endorsed by Paulson. "This may have a long-term cost on the U.S. economy."

Zingales said that he was "a bit disappointed" with the pace of progress on some of the committee's recommendations, which included creating an out-of-court system to resolve shareholder lawsuits against companies. Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved guidelines that may reduce the cost of complying with parts of Sarbanes-Oxley.

Some companies prefer the United States because they find that the burden of meeting higher regulatory standards encourages a culture of tighter controls and appeals to investors, said Catherine Kinney, co-president of NYSE Euronext, the New York-based operator of the world's largest stock exchange.

Companies listing in the United States have been willing to pay higher underwriting fees because they want to tap a larger base of investors and sell shares at a loftier price, said Tom Fox, the New York-based co-head of equity capital markets at UBS.

"That's simply not the case today, with liquidity in the European and Asian markets now rivaling the U.S.," said Fox, who expects IPOs in Europe to outpace offerings in the United States and Asia for the remainder of the year.

Fox added that the backlog of shares in Europe is "considerably larger" than in the United States.