Asean

United Overseas Bank is understood to have hired a former Standard Chartered banker as a senior director, corporate finance, within investment banking.

Malaysia’s CIMB Group has sold half of its international brokerage operations to China Galaxy Securities Co, formalising a plan set out last year.

Malaysian lenders RHB Bank and AMMB Holdings (AmBank Group) have entered into an exclusivity agreement for a potential merger.

Just as the country’s prime minister, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, met with Donald Trump on a US tour, Vietnam’s equity capital markets were repeatedly in the news over the last few weeks, with a flurry of IPOs and new listings, heralding that issuers there may finally be coming of age, writes columnist Philippe Espinasse.

The US Commodity and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has issued an order filing and settling charges against David Liew for spoofing, attempted manipulation and manipulation in the gold and silver futures markets.

The Singapore Exchange (SGX) is inviting the public to comment on some proposed changes to rubber derivatives on its commodity platform, the Singapore Commodity Exchange (SICOM).

Singapore’s HRnetGroup is closing books on its S$174m ($125.7m) IPO a day earlier than planned after investors jumped onboard the deal.

Singaporean broadband provider NetLink Trust is set to begin investor education this week for its IPO, which could raise around $1.5bn, according to a banker close to the deal.

Allocations are out for Petron Corp’s loan, which was opened to retail participation in late March. The company has absorbed the excess demand that came in during syndication, boosting the deal size to $1bn from $600m.

DBS Group sold its first senior unsecured bond in three years on Thursday, sealing a floating rate 2020 at a record tight spread for any Asia ex-Japan bank so far this year.

Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) is tapping the syndicated loan market for $100m split into two tranches with different tenors.

Indonesia's Mitra Pinasthika Mustika Finance has returned to the international loan market with a $100m deal, less than a year after signing its last fundraising.