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The investment banking arm of RHB Banking Group is tweaking its strategy to boost its presence outside Malaysia, and plans to build on its transaction and commercial banking relationships to win market share. Rashmi Kumar reports.

Bank of East Asia (BEA) executed a landmark trade this week, completing Asia’s first dollar liability management exercise into a Basel III instrument. With old style bank capital instruments losing capital value, market observers hope there will be more such transactions, writes Rev Hui.

Baosteel Hong Kong Investment Co sold a $500m exchangeable bond this week at terms that were aggressive even at the bottom end. Bankers clashed over whether the mandate process, conducted like an accelerated bookbuild, was good for the market, writes John Loh.

Most people have grown sick and tired of hearing and reading all the talk about whether or not the US Federal Reserve is about to raise rates.

A trio of bond issues from across the Balkan region – Turkey, Romania and Macedonia – are keeping emerging market investors ticking over as the Thanksgiving shutdown nears.

Transparency has been among the top priorities of regulators and policy makers in the post-crisis era, but they don’t seem to understand what kind of information is important or when it becomes so.

A list of 27 Russian banks and corporates have set up the Analytical Credit Rating Agency, and staffed it with some of the biggest names in the Russian capital markets. But while Russia needs a domestic ratings agency more than ever, its biggest challenge will be establishing credibility.

In the build-up to the Paris-based United Nations Climate Talks this weekend, banks are falling over themselves to demonstrate green credentials through their lending, their asset books and their borrowing. But just as important is what they choose not to finance, and why.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), the country’s financial markets watchdog, is understood to be vexed about the lack of retail participation in two recent high-profile IPOs. But this is much ado about nothing, and it would be a mistake for the regulator to start meddling again to protect the interests of small investors.

GlobalCapital enjoyed the relative calm of a week free of major bank restructurings. But there's plenty of worrying still to do, especially in the sovereign debt business.

The Asia ex-Japan bond market is set for a busy few weeks as issuers decide between pushing out deals now and postponing their fundraisings until 2016. Sovereigns and bank capital trades are part of the pipeline but with Thanksgiving holiday and a potential rate rise looming, timing has become critical, writes Narae Kim.

A group of Chinese city commercial banks are looking to catch the year end window for IPOs, opening books on their Hong Kong listings over the coming weeks. But thorny issues around valuations for China’s state assets mean friends and family style deals will once again rear their head, writes John Loh.