Asia Pacific

A senior banker involved in distressed debt trading at Bank of America Merrill Lynch has left.

Investors gave Kyobo Life Insurance Co a warm welcome as it debuted in the market on Monday with the first dollar bond from a South Korean life insurance company.

China’s ENN Energy Holdings grabbed a $600m bond on Monday, as investors ate up the credit given its three year hiatus from the international debt market.

British Columbia has hired Bank of China (BOC) for its second Panda deal, GlobalRMB has learned. Meanwhile, Hungary has chosen BOC and HSBC for a long-awaited Panda debut with a prospectus expected on Friday.

Indian renewable energy firm Greenko Energy Holdings returned to the green debt market this week, printing a $1bn dual-tranche trade — Asia's largest dollar corporate green bond to date.

Shares of Inner Mongolia Energy Engineering swung rather wildly on its debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Tuesday, following the company’s HK$1.2bn ($153.8m) IPO last week.

Great Wall Motors, the largest sports utility vehicle and pick-up manufacturer in China by units sold, has approached the overseas loan market with a $350m fresh money fundraising.

Socially conscious investing in Asia has so far concentrated on green bonds and little else. But SRI financing is not just limited to green bonds. By taking a broader approach, Asian borrowers — including sovereigns — can reap serious benefits.

India’s HDFC Standard Life Insurance Co has revived plans for an IPO, putting a proposed merger and backdoor listing with Max Life Insurance Co on the backburner, according to an exchange filing.

Asian green bonds are front and centre this week. Greenko Energy Holdings took the lead with its dollar bond on Monday, with Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings and Hong Kong’s Castle Peak Power Company rolling out their transactions on Tuesday.

Electric power generation company Zhejiang Provincial Energy Group is tapping the loan market to repay its debut dollar bond from 2014.

A relatively stable credit backdrop has encouraged a swathe of Asian issuers to tap the bond market this week, ensuring a blistering pace of issuance.