Foreword

Asia bounced back quickly after the financial crisis, and the overall health of the region’s banks – and, consequently, their ability to lend – has played no small role in this. “Overall, Asian banks and banking systems are in pretty good health and, perhaps, the best measure of that is Fitch’s individual ratings, with many ratings of C or above,” said Brett Hemsley, head of Fitch Ratings for Asia Pacific. “A ‘C’ rating or better means the key metrics of a bank are ‘adequate’, such as capital, asset quality, funding, liquidity, etc, and,...

Temasek launched its debut sterling bond in July and, days later, priced the first 40-year deal in the Singapore dollar market. Both deals were rare investment opportunities that bond buyers welcomed with gusto. Furthermore, they enabled Temasek to secure long-term funding at a competitive rate, while opening the door for other issuers to follow. “Temasek issued two different currencies in quick order, printing its sterling bonds first and following up with the inaugural 40-year Singapore dollar transaction within 72 hours. It showed its...

Malaysian mortgage agency Cagamas set a record of sorts this August when it sold three-year Islamic bonds of M$1bn (US$322m). Cagamas has long been a prolific issuer, but this was not the usual sukuk structure it had offered to the market in the past. Instead, the Islamic bonds, named Sukuk al-Amanah Li al-Istithmar, or Sukuk ALIm, were designed to forge a stronger connection with the Middle East market. Although Malaysia is the world’s biggest Islamic bond market, Middle Eastern investors have often argued that the sukuk papers do not comply...

Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management notched up its first peso-denominated retail bond in April, raising Ps30bn (US$674m) in a deal that Development Bank of Philippines, First Metro Investment Corp and HSBC jointly lead-managed. The deal was 1.7 times oversubscribed, as total tenders reached Ps33.7bn. “We were able to take advantage of the cash-rich domestic market and the low interest rate environment, which allowed us to increase the size from Ps20bn to Ps30bn at pricing levels tighter than the company was initially seeking,” said...

Intervention to cool down China’s rampant property prices in March this year almost killed all investor appetite for the sector. Any fundraising, especially in the international debt markets, seemed almost impossible to push through. Conditions remained all but impossible from May until the end of July, when Shimao re-opened the markets with its US$500m 9.65% Reg S bond to signal the return of appetite for the PRC real estate sector. The seven-year non-call four bonds attracted an order book of US$3.7bn from more than 240 accounts, underscoring...

A gricultural Bank of China will look back fondly on August 13. On that day, China’s third-largest lender fully exercised the greenshoe for its Shanghai IPO, lifting the size of its dual Hong Kong and Shanghai IPO to US$22.1bn and cementing its place in history as the world’s largest ever IPO. Having been forced to watch and wait as three of the “big four” state-owned lenders went public, ABC finally set the ball rolling for its own listing in April, when it invited the top investment banks in town to pitch for the mandate. Not surprisingly,...

Asking equity investors to fund small loans to poor women does not immediately sound like a recipe for a successful IPO. SKS Microfinance’s Rs16.5bn (US$357m) IPO in early August was the first time a microfinance institution had approached the stock markets, and the deal needed to overcome a fair amount of cynicism and controversy. SKS was cautiously optimistic when it opened the books for its IPO in the last week of July, but it need not have worried. Any concern that investors would pass on an altruistic business being transformed into a...

The real estate investment trust sector in Malaysia has long lived in the shadow of that in neighbouring Singapore. Listed REITs tended to be illiquid due to their small sizes, while the Singapore market thrived. When plans emerged in early 2010 for the listing of two Islamic REITs in Singapore - at the same time as the Philippines was pushing ahead with its first three property trust listings, each worth US$300m or more - Bursa Malaysia looked to be moving back even further into the shadows. Sunway REIT, however, drew some attention back to...

The S$300m (US$215m) CB for Ascendas REIT in mid-March introduced a new funding mechanism to the Singapore property trust sector. It was the first time an equity-linked fundraising had incorporated elements of a CMBS, and its successful execution opened a new alternative for a sector that had struggled to raise cost-effective funding following the collapse of the securitisation market. A-REIT’s seven-year put five CB used a structure – named exchangeable collateralised securities by sole-bookrunner Citigroup – that mimicked a CMBS and was...

When Bharti first bid for a telecom licence in 1992, it was a rank outsider – a telecom equipment maker without any real experience of operating a telecom company. Nearly two decades later, it is one of the biggest players, not just in India, but in the broader emerging markets. Bharti was the first Indian telco to attract over US$1bn in FDI – Warburg Pincus and Singapore Telecommunications were among its first investors – and the first from the industry to achieve a stock-market listing. Yet, it was still a relatively small company when it...

Please use the links below to access the special report tables.