China

Barclays has appointed Vanessa Koo as head of banking for Asia Pacific and Lars Aagaard as head of mergers and acquisitions for the region.

China’s Dalian Wanda Group has filed for a US IPO of up to $500m for its sports business, according to a source close to the deal.

Shandong Qingyuan Group has closed a $430m one year self-arranged club loan with five participants.

Dollar bond issuance in Asia appears to have got off to a strong start, with a rally both in the primary and secondary markets. But that is not enough for many DCM bankers in the region, who are hoping for a bigger upside.

In this round-up, the renminbi reached its strongest value against the dollar since July, December exports and imports volumes dropped, and trade volumes between China and Russia reached a record high.

Shanghai Commercial Bank followed Hong Kong’s Dah Sing Bank into the bond market on Thursday with a $300m Basel III-compliant tier two deal.

All eyes were on Sunac China Holdings on Thursday when it executed a deal that was six times covered at its peak. Despite the competition, Redco Properties Group also managed to walk away with a new bond, thanks to the flexibility of the 364-day format.

In this round-up, US-China extended the previously planned two-day trade talk to a third day, Li Keqiang met Tesla’s Elon Musk, and the state council rolled out lower tax rates for small and low profit businesses.

China’s effort to deleverage and rebalance the economy will be tested in 2019 as corporate defaults rise, hidden local government debts surface, and liquidity for the private sector gets squeezed, according to a January 7 poll by S&P.

Chinese property manager Country Garden Services Holdings has pocketed HK$1.96bn ($249.9m) from a top-up placement of new shares.

In this round-up, China’s foreign exchange reserves rebounded slightly for the second month in a row, Standard Chartered’s index for international RMB usage fell again, and China's consumer price index (CPI) inflation decelerated at the close of 2018.

Tencent Holdings-backed Weimob raised HK$845m ($107.8m) after pricing its IPO at the bottom of the indicative range on Thursday, a bit behind the original schedule, according to a banker close to the deal.