China

Ant Financial’s planned Hong Kong listing is just one of many jumbo deals that could land on the bourse this year. But few issuers will have such a clear path to success. The Alibaba halo should not be underestimated.

Three companies from the Greater China region sealed bonds on Tuesday, likely to be the last batch of issuers to tap the debt market before the Chinese New Year break begins. No Asian borrowers launched dollar deals on Wednesday.

Chinese biopharmaceutical company Zai Lab has kicked off a follow-on offering of its American Depository Shares. It is aiming to raise around $300m.

Natixis Investment Managers has hired a head of China in its Beijing office from US rival JP Morgan.

UCloud Technology Co, a cloud storage company, became the first Chinese dual-class share issuer to list in mainland China. The firm’s stock price jumped 120% on Monday.

The Asian bond market has been red hot since the start of 2020. With nearly every day bringing a number of blowout deals, it would be easy to overlook the three borrowers that have fallen short of completing their proposed transactions. But the failed deals may be a sign of things to come.

Chinese real estate developer Beijing Capital Land has raised HK$925.3m ($119.1m) from the H-share portion of a three-tranche rights issue.

All of the dollar debt issuance from Greater China on Monday came from real estate companies, with six borrowers taking about $1.4bn between them.

Contrary to market expectations, the People’s Bank of China kept both the one year and five year loan prime rates (LPRs) unchanged on Monday.

Chinese co-living platform Phoenix Tree priced its US listing below the initial marketed range and reduced the size of its IPO, raising $129.6m. Its stock had a volatile start to trading last Friday.

Sun Hung Kai Properties took advantage of a favourable market backdrop and solid aftermarket performance of its latest dollar bond to return with a tap just four days after the original transaction was priced.

In this round-up, China and Myanmar have signed deals on Belt and Road projects, the central bank has kept the benchmark lending rates unchanged, and overseas investors increased their holdings of Chinese bonds and stocks by $128bn in 2019.