Asean

Hyosung Vina Chemicals is holding bank presentations and a site visit at the end of January to woo lenders with a $750m syndicated financing that has been relaunched with a smaller size, higher margins and a different bookrunning team.

MUFG has appointed three veteran bankers to senior positions in its Malaysian subsidiary.

BNP Paribas made a comeback to the Singapore dollar bond market to shore up its capital, bringing the year’s first Basel III-compliant tier two outing in the currency.

ASM Pacific Technology is tapping the offshore loan market for the first time, raising a HK$2.25bn ($287m) five year borrowing to refinance a convertible bond maturing in March.

The Philippines is preparing a sovereign catastrophe bond, the World Bank said on Monday. The imperilled country could be the next to use the instrument as insurance against natural disasters.

Dollar bond issuance in Asia appears to have got off to a strong start, with a rally both in the primary and secondary markets. But that is not enough for many DCM bankers in the region, who are hoping for a bigger upside.

Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) has launched a $700m multi-tranche loan into general syndication, raising some debate among bankers about the tight pricing on offer.

Indian and Indonesian dollar bonds were buoyed last week by positive investor sentiment that drove secondary market trading and paved the way for fresh debt issuance.

China’s effort to deleverage and rebalance the economy will be tested in 2019 as corporate defaults rise, hidden local government debts surface, and liquidity for the private sector gets squeezed, according to a January 7 poll by S&P.

In this round-up, China’s foreign exchange reserves rebounded slightly for the second month in a row, Standard Chartered’s index for international RMB usage fell again, and China's consumer price index (CPI) inflation decelerated at the close of 2018.

Indonesian textile company Sri Rejeki Isman (Sritex) has returned to the syndications market for a $350m loan that will go partly towards a bond buy-back.

A jump in foreign holdings of Chinese government bonds (CGBs), combined with the upcoming inclusion of CGBs in global indices in April, is set to improve liquidity in the mainland’s secondary debt market and gradually widen the scope of international investor participation, writes Rebecca Feng.