Asia Pacific

Nongfu Spring, a Chinese bottled water and beverage company, has kicked off pre-deal investor education for its Hong Kong IPO.

China’s local government financing vehicles (LGFVs) have seen strong appetite for their dollar bonds recently, allowing them to price deals at new lows, as a combination of attractive returns and expectations of state support amid Covid-19 wins over investors.

ANZ has named two of its veteran bankers to senior positions helming institutional and transaction banking for Australia.

Chinese biotechnology company JW (Cayman) Therapeutics is planning to float on Hong Kong’s stock exchange. It has filed a draft prospectus with the bourse.

In this round-up, the six month review of the US-China trade deal has been delayed, the head of the Chinese banking and insurance regulator talks about non-performing loan risk and the resurgence of shadow banking activity, and the Hang Seng Index begins including secondary listed companies and those with weighted voting rights.

Jin-Hei Park, chief executive officer of Citibank Korea, is retiring in October.

In this round-up, total social financing (TSF) growth in July is below expectations due to a steep fall in new renminbi loans, the banking industry’s profit growth turns negative for the first half of 2020, and Baidu’s video unit iQiyi says it is under the scrutiny of the US securities regulator.

In this round-up, China produces a sanctions list in response to a similar move by the US, multinational companies raise concerns on US president Donald Trump’s executive order against Tencent’s WeChat, and Chinese telecommunications firms will be barred from taking part in India’s 5G trial.

Indonesian tanker company Soechi Lines, which is facing a big hit to its shipyard operation, is in discussions with banks for a refinancing loan.

Yuexiu Transport Infrastructure, a Hong Kong-listed red Panda issuer, returned to the renminbi market this week for a small Rmb500m ($72m) bond. The issuer wrapped up the deal after extending the bookbuilding period by half a day.

The Kingdom of Thailand pulled off a novel sustainability bond in the domestic debt market on Thursday, hitting the upper end of its Bt30bn ($965m) size target and getting away with tight pricing.

Singapore fintech BondEvalue launched BondbloX Bond Exchange this week, which claims to be the first blockchain-based exchange in the world, with the maiden trade executed on a bond from commodities giant Olam.