Asia Pacific

In this round up, Bank of China’s monthly index shows decreasing onshore funding cost, Value Partners’ flagship fund became MRF-eligible and a quarterly London RMB business report shows that the city still leads the way on offshore RMB trading in Europe.

In this round-up, Chinese president Xi Jinping’s speech at the celebration of China’s reform and opening up offered no concrete promises, the People’s Bank of China reopened the seven-day reverse repo after 36 days of suspension, and China dropped its holding of US government bonds for the fifth consecutive month.

The decision to further postpone the ETF Connect between China and Hong Kong offers an opportunity to improve the mutual recognition of funds (MRF) scheme. In a recent report, Ernst & Young and the Hong Kong Investment Funds Association offered the authorities some suggestions.

Papua New Guinea is hoping to build on the momentum of its long-awaited international bond debut by kick-starting a domestic corporate bond market.

Malaysia's securities regulator has upheld its decision to penalise those involved in the listing scandal of Lotte Chemical Titan after dismissing the review applications.

2019 is likely to be another year where the independent mandate of central bankers comes under pressure from populist politicians in democracies. It is easy for those in the market to sympathise with the quiet technocrats over the loud-mouthed headbangers, but scrutiny is deserved.

A host of emerging market opportunities are set to be presented to equity investors in 2019 with Kazakhstan likely to lead the way with a number of highly anticipated listings. Sam Kerr reports.

As central banks retreat from public markets, spreads are widening in dollars and euros, and cross-currency basis swaps are improving for international borrowers, Swiss bankers believe the good times might be returning to a market once known the world over for diversification and arbitrage.

Hungary’s latest Panda looks, at least on paper, like a club deal rather than a genuine syndicated bond, with bankers disagreeing on how the deal might have played out in the market.

The Malaysian government has filed criminal charges against Goldman Sachs for its alleged complicity in 1MDB and is seeking fines of over $3bn in a bid to recover assets from one of the world’s worst financial scandals.

Deloitte is predicting a major decline in Hong Kong IPO volumes next year, in large part because of uncertainty in the global economic outlook.

Cromwell European Real Estate Investment Trust (CEReit) has wrapped up a well-oversubscribed rights issue, raising €224.1m to fund the acquisition of various properties across Europe.