Asia Pacific

Research by a US thinktank shows that the World Bank will have to carry out major reform of its lending to China to meet US-driven goals to focus loans on projects with benefits outside wealthy provinces. By Phil Thornton

Westpac New Zealand drew strong support for its five year covered bond on Thursday which took advantage of the strong demand and performance identified in ANZ New Zealand’s earlier deal.

Fitch Ratings has remedied its long lack of a visible response to the rise of environmental, social and governance investing by launching a set of ESG relevance scores.

Catching up with friends on the latest gossip is always good fun — but only if you are meeting at a respectable place.

Hong Kong’s Dah Sing Bank priced a popular $225m Basel III-compliant tier two deal this week, kicking off what is set to be a critical year for Asia’s bank capital market. Addison Gong reports.

A jump in foreign holdings of Chinese government bonds (CGBs), combined with the upcoming inclusion of CGBs in global indices in April, is set to improve liquidity in the mainland’s secondary debt market and gradually widen the scope of international investor participation, writes Rebecca Feng.

China’s Road King Infrastructure nabbed $400m from a bond that was priced 50bp inside of initial guidance, on the back of the largest order book for an Asian deal recently.

The Republic of the Philippines threw open the door for emerging market sovereign issuance for 2019, raising $1.5bn in an outing that offered investors just a small concession. The country’s decision to attract new Chinese investors also paid off, writes Morgan Davis.

Malaysia’s equity capital market is set for a dramatic rebound after an exceptionally quiet 2018. It promises to offer those investors that have been underweight on the country for a long time plenty of attractive opportunities to put their money to work, writes Christie Ou.

CK Infrastructure Holdings has corralled HK$2.32bn ($295.7m) after offloading some of its shares in Power Assets Holdings, according to a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

China YuHua Education Corp has bagged HK$940m ($119.9m) from a sub-one year convertible bond, bumping up the deal size on the back of strong hedge fund demand.

Anta Sports Products has launched its €2.2bn loan to back the acquisition of Amer Sports Oyj into general syndication, with HSBC joining the bookrunning group.