Banks

Ex-Barclays banker joins Finsbury to develop equity advisory — Laubjerg hired for natural resources at HSBC — Rousseau leaves Deutsche and joins Citi

HSBC might be in the middle of a big restructuring, but that isn’t stopping plans to develop mid-market M&A efforts in France, Germany and Asia as well as the UK, writes David Rothnie. The bank has also bolstered its teams covering specific sectors.

The Emirate of Dubai surpassed expectations on its return to the bond market six years after its last issuance, with the sukuk tranche of its dual trade gaining notable traction. The borrower is the third Emirate to enter debt markets since the coronavirus crisis began.

KBC was marketing a fixed-to-floating rate note on Thursday. Strong demand allowed it to tighten pricing by 15bp during execution.

A new tier two deal from Italian lender Monte dei Paschi di Siena on Thursday showed that the market is open for trickier credits looking to sell riskier bonds. The deal emerged as the European Central Bank told Monte to raise capital to complete the sale of €8bn of non-performing exposures to Amco, the state-owned asset management company.

Fast food franchise operator Yum China Holdings is cooking a multi-billion-dollar secondary offering in Hong Kong. It is the latest deal in a growing trend that bankers expect will bring more US-listed Chinese companies to the exchange by the the end of 2020, writes Jonathan Breen.

Solar glass manufacturer Xinyi Solar Holdings raised HK$2.7bn ($343.5m) on Wednesday, after boosting the size of a primary share sale.

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation sent a positive signal to hesitant Asian covered bond issuers on Thursday when it was set to price its first negative yielding covered bond, attracting a deeper and broader scale of demand than on any of its previous deals.

Beijing Infrastructure Investment Co used a direct guarantee structure for its dollar bond return instead of a keepwell agreement, just days after keepwell deals sold by Peking University Founder Group were not recognised in a debt restructuring. The move paid off for the metro operator — bolstering the rating of its deal and helping it get away with tight pricing. Alice Huang reports.

BOSC International, Bank of Shanghai’s investment bank, took an aggressive approach to pricing its $300m bond on Wednesday. Investors balked at the issuer’s strategy, forcing it to settle for a much smaller deal than planned.

Singapore’s Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp (OCBC) raised $1bn from a tier two subordinated note on Wednesday that was priced at a new low.

Standard Chartered has relocated a veteran banker from Taiwan to take on the newly created job of chief executive officer for the Greater Bay Area.