Asia Pacific

Indian power company NTPC made its debut in the euro market on Wednesday with a €500m deal, seeking out the currency to take advantage of favourable interest rates.

ANZ names new Oz loan syndications head — SBI Capital Markets, CIMB India lose ECM bankers — JP Morgan hires for China research

Investors had to get to grips with the dynamics of Mainland water supply this week as China Water Affairs Group made a $300m debut on Wednesday.

One thing my contemporaries in banking can never be accused of is lacking optimism. And sometimes, the tactics they deploy to stay positive amid dwindling deal flow surprises even me.

A recent spate of high profile loans has shown that Indian banks have the ability to execute highly structured M&A funding. This has reignited gripes about rules that bar Indian lenders from funding acquisitions of domestic companies, hindering the growth of small borrowers with big ambitions. Shruti Chaturvedi reports.

A dual currency financing to back Indian company Intas Pharmaceuticals’ acquisition of a portfolio of assets in the UK and Ireland has netted $650m-$670m of commitments.

India’s Jain Irrigation Systems sold its maiden international deal on Wednesday, taking $200m from Asia’s first green bond of the year. Finding comparables was a big challenge given the issuer’s focus on irrigation for agriculture, with the leads juggling feedback from investors to find the right price. Rashmi Kumar reports.

Vedanta Resources has become the first Indian high yield issuer this year, raking in $1bn from a 5.5 year transaction. A strong rally in its outstanding bonds, combined with a turnaround in both the company’s credit and the commodities industry, ensured tight pricing and a successful outcome.

China’s financial markets have undergone a huge transformation over the past few years with a series of reforms aimed at improving access for foreign investors and liberalising its exchange rate mechanism. GlobalRMB reached out to several industry bodies to get a sense of initiatives they are working on and where China’s reform priorities lie this year.

Renminbi internationalisation struggled to make progress in 2016 with RMB payments declining by close to 30%, according to Swift.

Queensland Treasury Corp ran a prototype bond auction on Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s blockchain platform, the bank said on Tuesday. QTC generated a bond tender, viewed investor bids in real time, finalised investment allocation and settled the dummy issue instantly — although it was on both sides of the deal, as sole issuer and investor.

Westpac extended its sterling curve out to eight years on Wednesday, giving UK investors a rare chance to snap up Australian bank senior debt.