Greater China

Hesteel Hong Kong Corp, part of China’s Hesteel Group, is seeking liquidity for a $150m three year bullet in the offshore loan market.

China Resources Pharmaceutical Group has lined up eight cornerstone investors for its HK$15.6bn ($2.0bn) Hong Kong IPO, with the group agreeing to buy $916m worth of shares.

Chinese issuers are returning to the international bond market after a one week national holiday, with TUS Holdings and Zhuzhou City Construction Development Group heading out with their deals.

Renminbi globalisation has been successful so far, but now the low-hanging fruit has been picked, Chinese authorities will struggle to push through the next round of reforms, according to Eswar Prasad, professor at Cornell University and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

It has been three years since China launched the landmark Shanghai Free Trade Zone with the area originally envisioned as the blueprint for further reforms throughout the country. While market participants are disappointed by the authorities’ continued grip on capital controls, they are happy with the overall direction of the FTZ scheme.

Former UBS veteran Honggui Li has joined Credit Suisse as managing director and head of investment banking and capital markets, China, effective immediately, according to a memo seen by GlobalCapital Asia.

China Resources Pharmaceutical Group will raise as much as HK$15.6bn ($2.0bn) via a Hong Kong IPO after firming up the price range.

Chinese local government financing vehicles Huai’an Traffic Holding and Jiangsu Zhongguancun Science Park Holding Group are hitting the road this week ahead of their first dollar offerings.

China’s reliance on a loose collection of market regulators has exacerbated market volatility, with the IMF welcoming plans for a total revamp of the financial markets institutional framework, according to Markus Rodlauer, former China mission chief and deputy director of the Asia and Pacific Department.

The vice-president of the New Development Bank, Paulo Nogueira Batista Junior, tells GlobalMarkets how his institution is lending on projects and issuing green bonds in line with the increasing concern with environmental issues

Sri Lanka’s economy is slowly being wrestled back into shape, following the disastrous era of scattergun borrowing and spending that embodied the previous government. But, the country’s finance minister tells Global Markets, much remains to be done in order to clear a huge backlog of debt and toxic loans out of the financial system, and get the economy moving again

The world remains a divided realm, the chief economist of ratings agency Standard & Poor’s warned, with some countries rising and growing, and others facing years of steady decline