Asia Pacific

Hong Kong’s eSun Holdings opened the books for its debut offshore renminbi issue – an unrated four year bond – on Tuesday. eSun is only the second high yield Chinese borrower to appear in the CNH market in two months.

Bank of Communications Hong Kong branch (BOCOM HK) priced a three tranche Taiwan-listed renminbi-denominated bond on Monday, raising a total of Rmb2bn ($325m) across three, five and seven year tenors. The deal is only the third Formosa bond to total Rmb2bn, and the first to be priced this year since Export-Import Bank of Korea (Kexim) raised Rmb1bn exactly five months earlier.

Westpac New Zealand tapped the covered bond market for the first time since 2011 on Tuesday. The €750m five year was the most oversubscribed antipodean deal of 2014 and the most granular from the region. Around half the investors were new to the name.

Beijing Capital Co priced its inaugural bond in international markets on Friday issuing a three year offshore renminbi bond.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is setting up a facility to provide overnight renminbi liquidity to financial institutions in Singapore, to be launched on 1 July. Meanwhile, the Nanjing branch of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has released a set of interim procedures to allow eligible corporates and individuals in the Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) to conduct cross-border RMB transactions with Singapore.

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) this week said it would expand the scope and the size of its Qualified Domestic Institutional Investors (QDII) and Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFII) schemes, as it pushes towards capital account convertibility. Market participants reckon the changes could help lift sluggish activity, but it might not be enough to reduce the attractions of a QDII/RQFII arbitrage trade that has become popular.

Hong Kong Huafa Investment made its first issue in the offshore renminbi market on Wednesday with a Rmb850m ($138.2m) three year bond.

MSCI said on Wednesday that it would not include A-shares in its Emerging Markets Index for the time being, shortly after FTSE had said it would make available a set of custom indices allowing clients to include A-shares if they wished.

Hong Kong Huafa Investment unveiled its debut offshore renminbi bond on Wednesday. The three year issue is the second dim sum transaction this month to be backed by a standby letter of credit (SBLC).

Banks that have already helped a number of corporates in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ) integrate China treasury operations with regional and global centres are looking forward to the day when the potential of recent reforms is fully realised. The logical next step, they say, is for RMB cross-border two-way sweeping to be available to all corporates in China, not just those based in the FTZ.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission posted on social media Weibo that it has approved 10 IPO applications, paving the way for A-share listings to resume for the second time this year.

China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (Safe) is planning to make the Renminbi Qualified Institutional Investor (RQFII) scheme more flexible by allowing institutions to allocate their quota to any of their own RQFII products, instead of having to apply for product-based approval on a case by case basis, two RQFII fund managers have told GlobalRMB.