Asia Pacific

Société Générale has named Sayan Das its head of financial institutions group in India, a newly created role at the bank.

Hong Kong property developer Lai Sun Development has closed a HK$924.3m ($119m) one-for-two rights offering that was just short of 70% subscribed.

Standard & Poor’s has warned that Indian stated-backed banks could soon be facing a slew of downgrades as the amount of capital needed to provide for bad loans is likely to shoot up.

Singapore-based wastewater treatment company Hyflux has returned to the loan market for a $300m triple currency refinancing.

The Asia ex-Japan bond market finally saw some primary activity on Wednesday with the Republic of the Philippines set to be the first sovereign issuer of the year. The country launched a new 25 year bond and is giving investors the option to switch out of 16 outstanding deals at the same time.

The covered bond market could see the second Singaporean deal soon, with United Overseas Bank (UOB) mandating leads for a series of European investor meetings that could result in its first deal.

A protracted slump in equity markets has pushed some risk measures in the US and Asia to extremes.

India is finally set to welcome its first publicly listed infrastructure investment trusts (InvITs), with GMR Infrastructure and IRB Infrastructure Developers having officially asked the Securities and Exchange Board of India for approval to create and list their respective vehicles. But while the first deals are certainly welcome, much more needs to be done for the asset class to have a strong foundation.

After two years of promoting renminbi internationalisation at full speed, Chinese regulators have put on the brakes as they go to extraordinary lengths to stop the currency leaving the country. Could RMB internationalisation become RMB re-nationalisation in 2016?

A $1.775bn loan for ONGC Videsh, the international arm of India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp, has attracted commitments from just two lenders in syndication, with the deal due to close by the end of this week.

India’s National Stock Exchange (NSE) has relented to listing on a rival bourse, but on the condition that regulatory disclosures are made to an independent third party rather than the competitor exchange.

Hindustan Petroleum Corp (HPCL) has launched a $465m 21 month refinancing into general syndication with three participation levels on offer.