Greater China

Nominative determinism has come up in Taipan before. But not everyone can love thy fate.

Chinese cloud-based communications provider Cloopen Group Holdings saw its stock price triple on the first day of trading, after sealing a $320m IPO above the marketed range.

Chinese bond investors welcomed the issuance of new ‘carbon neutrality bonds’ this week. Six companies raised a combined Rmb6.4bn ($994m) in the format, supporting Beijing’s goal of net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2060.

Chinese property company Huafa Industrial Co Ltd Zhuhai raised $200m from the sale of a sub-one year note on Tuesday.

China Taiping Insurance Group Co has raised a HK$8.7bn ($1.12bn) loan to refinance debt taken for the acquisition of an office building in Hong Kong.

Baidu has become the latest technology company from China to tap the loan market, breaking a four-year absence from syndication for a $3bn transaction. The company wants to take advantage of the growing popularity of tech deals among bank lenders. Pan Yue reports.

Hong Kong’s stock exchange operator has named Nicolas Aguzin, chief executive of JP Morgan’s international private bank, as its new CEO.

Chinese regulators have made a long overdue move to reduce the number of boards at the Shenzhen stock exchange. That points to a greater commitment towards streamlining the country’s sometimes confounding capital markets.

China-based Betta Pharmaceuticals, a developer of cancer treatments, is planning a Hong Kong IPO, having filed draft paperwork with the city’s stock exchange on Monday.

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) is planning to introduce new rules that will require syndicate teams on bond and equity deals to be fixed earlier and brokers to disclose their fee structures, moves that are aimed at improving transparency in the city's capital markets and hold banks more accountable for their transactions.

Banks operating in Hong Kong are actively pushing for the adoption of alternative risk-free rates as the deadline for phasing out Libor, the old lending benchmark, approaches.

GlobalCapital and HSBC hosted a virtual roundtable in mid-January to discuss the blowout start to high yield bond issuance in 2021. Leading market experts highlighted how Asia’s debt markets have shifted — and how borrowers are positioning themselves for the rest of the year.