Asia Pacific

The steep drop in equity capital market volumes in Asia this year is not worrying bankers just yet, as they set their sights on a pick-up in deal flow after the Chinese New Year holiday in early February.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has appointed Mark Warburton as its new head of Australia equity capital markets, according to an internal memo seen by GlobalCapital Asia.

Mongolian Mortgage Corp (MIK) showed that investors have the appetite to take on frontier market risk, raising a larger-than-expected $250m from an issuance that was months in the making.

China Evergrande Group hit its size goal of $3bn with a tap of three of its existing bonds, a strategic decision by the property developer. But the issuance dented its secondary curve as noteholders fled to the juicier new transaction.

Ping An Real Estate, a unit of Ping An Group, is returning to the loan market for an up to $300m borrowing after a two-year absence.

Far East Horizon has opened into syndication a $580m-equivalent three year term loan via six mandated lead arrangers and bookrunners.

Samsung BioLogics has caught a break after a South Korean court suspended the disciplinary action brought against the company by the country’s financial regulator for alleged accounting fraud.

South Korea’s Suhyup Bank returned to the international bond market on Tuesday after a near five year hiatus to raise $300m.

AC Energy raised $225m from the first public green dollar bond from the Philippines, a deal in line with its renewable energy-related ambitions.

Investors swarmed to Johnson Electric Holdings’ maiden dollar bond transaction, allowing the borrower to raise $300m from a nearly six times oversubscribed deal at its peak.

Haitong UniTrust International Leasing, owned by Haitong International Securities, is seeking a $100m loan as its parent company also woos lenders to a separate, larger facility.

Fearful of missing out and, in the absence of competing credit supply, investors piled into six covered bonds on Tuesday with a combined value of more than €6bn.Royal Bank of Canada’s deal epitomised the state of investor frenzy as it was able to issue the largest deal of the year with a negative new issue premium.