Asia Pacific

China’s decision to reform its parity mechanism has ushered in a new phase of volatility for both the onshore RMB (CNY) and its offshore counterpart (CNH). Beijing has said markets should welcome the volatility as a signal of its reduced influence on the currency. For market watchers, external forces will be equally crucial to its success.

Chinese regulators have been moving at record speed to smooth market access issues arising from its capital account opening initiatives, but the timing and manner of regulators’ interventions were still hard for markets to swallow, said the world’s largest asset management firm.

One to two year CNY swaps have been bid on the back of the PBOC's lower USD/CNY fixing today. The short-end has underperformed and the curve has flattened as a result, writes Deirdre Yeung of Total Derivatives.

Chinese state-owned enterprise Shandong Gold Group is planning to issue its first international bond with the help of a standby letter of credit from Bank of China’s Shandong branch.

The Export-Import Bank of Korea (Kexim) timed its first outing to the offshore bond market after a sovereign rating upgrade perfectly. This time around, the Korean policy bank kept money on the table to woo US investors rather than relying on strong onshore demand to be aggressive with pricing.

India’s Aditya Birla Group, which has been in discussions with its relationship banks about refinancing a loan raised in 2011, is likely to launch a new $925m deal before the end of the month.

Singapore-based BW Pacific has opened books for a listing on the Oslo Stock Exchange, as the tanker company looks to raise as much as Nkr2.4bn ($283m) from its IPO.

ICBCIL Finance, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, has set its sights on a triple-tranche dollar offering split between three and five year fixed rate notes as well as a three year floating rate tranche.

The head of capital solutions at Standard Chartered has left the firm as the bank’s restructuring efforts continue to take shape.

BNP Paribas’ former co-head of fixed income has resurfaced at New York headquartered M&A advisory shop Foros as a senior advisor.

Westpac has mandated leads and opened books for a dollar benchmark covered bond, to be priced on Monday. And in euros, Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) has mandated leads for a €500m no-grow seven year benchmark, to be launched on Tuesday.

HSBC announced it was launching a joint venture with Shenzhen Qianhai Financial Holdings, to give it an onshore securities license and build an onshore renminbi debt capital markets business.