The loan market has displayed its famous resilience in Asia again this year with the deal flow from many jurisdictions strong despite the much talked about sub-prime turmoil that has become the constant backdrop to capital markets issuance this year. Even more encouraging than the strong deal flow is the fact that large event-linked loans have been the defining feature of this year’s loan issuance and these are exactly the sort of transactions that banks like for not only are they drawn facilities – they typically pay more than loans that are...Read more
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India has made waves in the global marketplace this year thanks to its corporates’ seemingly insatiable appetite for overseas assets, which has fuelled M&A activity to record levels. This has produced a string of capital markets deals and has catapulted the Indian loan market to the region’s busiest.
M&A financing has been one of the biggest drivers of the Asian loan market over the past year. Corporates are more acquisitive than they have ever been with deals being signed from Korea to India. And in the absence of more sophisticated, subordinated funding strategies, senior loans are providing the capital.
Casino financings have been one of the year’s big themes with jumbo loans being put in place to fund casinos in Macau and Singapore, and the US sub-prime crisis seems to have had little impact. The former Portuguese enclave that has overtaken Las Vegas as the world's largest casino market looks set to remain the centre of casino loans in Asia.
Loan banks are counting the cost of the havoc that the credit crunch has wreaked on the Australasian market. A few months ago the market was all but shut in the immediate aftermath of the sub-prime crisis but there are now signs that some semblance of normality is returning.
When the Hong Kong Airport Authority contacted bankers to discuss a HK$6bn three-year and five-year loan earlier this year, the potential lenders got a shock. HKAA had watched the progress of MTR Corp’s HK$10bn three-year and five-year borrowing with interest. That deal had paid top level all-ins of 14bp and 18bp over Hibor respectively, the tightest levels ever in Hong Kong’s loan markets and HKAA wanted to go tighter still.