Asean

Formosa Plastics Group is holding talks with 10 to 15 lenders for a dual tranche fundraising of $2.5bn, with banks asked to submit their pricing thoughts for the loan.

In this round-up, Chinese premier Li Keqiang said RMB internationalisation to continue, South Korea's RMB deposits halving in a few months, HKMA revamps its RMB liquidity facility, Singapore Exchange and Moscow Exchange see surging RMB trade volumes, Shanghai Gold Exchange expands its list of assets that can be used as collateral for trading to A-shares and foreign currencies, and Deutsche Bank joins OTC Clear as a clearing member.

Intercontinental Exchange expects to launch its ICE Futures Singapore and ICE Clear Singapore platforms on November 17 with five new contracts.

Asia’s dollar bond market finally sprang to life this week with a trio of investment grade names successfully pricing deals. Participants are now hoping that the market is open for business, but lingering volatility means trades will come with a bigger price tag, write Narae Kim and Rashmi Kumar.

Axis Bank has begun sounding out lenders for a $274m loan related to Indian pharmaceutical firm Strides Arcolab's recent acquisition in Australia.

Philippines’ Petron Corp, which recently amended covenants on a 2014 borrowing, has hit the market for a $550m refinancing that was funded in July.

Citi has appointed David Ratliff to the newly created position of head of public sector banking for Asia Pacific. The move is part of the bank’s strategy to combine corporate and investment banking alongside markets and securities services coverage of public sector clients in the region.

Summarecon Investment Property (SIP), a unit of Indonesian property giant Summarecon Agung, is looking to raise $200m-$250m in an IPO, with banks on the trade expecting to open books in October or November.

The Republic of the Philippines has pulled off a mammoth Ps263bn ($5.6bn) transaction, switching investors out of existing domestic bonds into new notes, with bondholders flooding in despite a volatile economic backdrop. The sovereign’s liability management exercise was well worth the effort with savings of about Ps2.4bn expected in the first year.

Indian pharmaceutical major Biocon, which approached the overseas loan market in July for a $200m loan, has seen five lenders join the syndicate.

RHB Capital has fixed the pricing for its rights offer to raise MR2.5bn ($581.5m), as the bank embarks on an internal restructuring and shores up capital to help meet Basel III requirements.

Judy Hsu is taking over as Standard Chartered's chief executive for Singapore from October 1.