Australia

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

Deutsche promotes Elalingam to IB coverage job — JPM hires Aus head of financial sponsors

Ian Taylor has rejoined Goldman Sachs, as head of equity capital markets for Australia and New Zealand, following a short stint at a fintech-focused merchant bank in the US.

The case of O’Donnell versus the Australian Commonwealth, if successful, could force all issuers seeking to make use of the Australian bond market to make thorough disclosures of their climate strategy.

SPDB loses investment banking head — MUFG names PF, ESG head for Oceania — Loans veteran Ooi moves to Sydney

MUFG Bank has appointed Rob Ward as head of project finance and head of ESG finance for Oceania, the firm said on Thursday.

The International Finance Corporation sold the first SSA Kangaroo deal in over three weeks on Thursday, returning to the market with a A$100m ($71.9m) 11 year bond.

Australia surprised the market on Tuesday with a bumper long end deal that attracted a substantial amount of offshore interest. The deal comes just as New Zealand sets a date for its for its next syndicated deal.

Siong Ooi, MUFG Bank’s co-head of debt capital markets, loans and bonds, has relocated to Sydney from Singapore.

ANZ has altered the pre-maturity test of the hard bullet transactions in its covered bond programme, by doubling the time the covered bond guarantor has to sell assets. The "investor-friendly" update, which improves rating stability, follows ANZ’s recent downgrade and could be of interest to other issuers in a similar situation.

Australia has launched its second syndication of its 2020-21 fiscal year on Monday morning, Sydney time, extending its curve out to 2051 with a new benchmark.

In a world first this week, 23-year-old student and Australian retail government bond investor Katta O’Donnell filed a legal challenge against the sovereign on Wednesday, claiming that the government does not do enough to disclose the risks of climate change to investors. If successful, the case could change issuers’ obligations regarding climate risk disclosure.