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If investors were a family, the activist hedge fund would be the brattish 20-something rich kid with libertarian opinions who relishes annoying everyone else. You wouldn’t expect this character to get on with the woke, vegan responsible investor who loves to hold forth on moral values.

Ant Group started speaking to investors this week for mammoth IPOs on the Hong Kong and Star markets, which at an estimated size of $30bn would become the world’s largest ever share offering. The deal is a big win for both exchanges — and bankers in Hong Kong are also expecting a record fee from the deal. Jonathan Breen and Rebecca Feng report.

Renewable energy has finally arrived as one of the premier sectors in equity capital markets. All it took was a global pandemic.

KfW began a new wave of 10 year supply this week, reopening the SSA market’s trickiest tenor for business. Issuers are so eager to access the maturity that they are having to jockey for position.

Metals and mining firm Vedanta Resources’ $1.4bn bond this week took it one step closer to the planned delisting of a subsidiary. But the company took an unusual approach to the deal — a rare bond outing for a take-private in Asia — by offering investors a secured and callable amortising bond. Morgan Davis reports.

The coronavirus crisis has reshaped many aspects of finance, but not the line-up of top investment banks. It does appear to have pressed some firms into sharp decisions, though.

Ke Holdings sealed a $2.12bn IPO on the New York Stock Exchange this week, the largest US listing by a Chinese firm in more than two years, defying the shock caused by US sanctions against one of its largest shareholders, Tencent Holdings. Jonathan Breen reports.

KKR, the US private equity group, has sold a $1bn mandatory convertible bond to fund its acquisition of life insurer Global Atlantic Financial Group, which it announced last month.

The coronavirus crisis is a further reminder that fundamentals are not the only thing that matters when investing in bank capital.

Institutional investors in private placements (PPs) have signalled their appetite for borrowers beyond their typical stables throughout the coronavirus pandemic. But this week’s transaction from Vanguard Group — the largest in the market’s history — showed the size of funding available, as buyers demand bigger deals. Silas Brown reports.

Alibaba Health Information Technology navigated concerns around its lofty valuations to pull off Hong Kong’s largest primary follow-on in five years, raising HK$10bn ($1.29bn) after boosting the size of the deal. The transaction closed with a bulging book, showing that demand for the healthcare sector is yet to peak. Jonathan Breen reports.

The US Department of Labour (DoL) has proposed what it characterises as a reiteration of what has always been required of retirement fiduciaries — that they act in the best interest of their beneficiaries — urging them to disregard ESG considerations in investment decisions. In doing so, it appears not to have noticed the last decade in financial markets, which has shown that ESG investing is very much in investors’ interests.