Greater China

The Asian loans teams at three banks have seen changes recently following exits in Hong Kong and Singapore.

China Minmetals Corp printed its first dollar bond of the year on Wednesday, replicating the same structure as its last outing a year ago. While some market participants reckoned the issuer was aggressive with pricing, the secondary performance of the notes indicated otherwise.

China Jinjiang Environment Holding Co has bagged S$184.3m ($135.8m) after wrapping up a Singapore listing, in a rare transaction from a mainland company.

CDB Capital, a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Development Bank Corp, has mandated banks to arrange a roadshow from Friday for a Reg S only dollar trade.

Invitations are out for commodities trader Trafigura’s annual Asian financing, which as in the past couple of years includes a renminbi tranche.

The renminbi suffered a setback and was overtaken by the Canadian dollar as the fifth most used currency for payments globally, according to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication’s (Swift) RMB tracker for June.

The Brics New Development Bank (NDB) executed a landmark trade on July 18, making its capital markets debut with a Rmb3bn ($450m) bond in China. But when even the authorities have trouble knowing whether to classifying it as green or Panda debt, it is clear the need for unambiguous and official bond regulation is long overdue.

Greenland Hong Kong and China Railway Group opened books for their respective dollar bonds on Thursday after meetings with investors earlier this week.

A Hong Kong-based senior banker at HSBC, who has worked in the syndicated loans team for nearly a decade, is understood to have left the bank.

China Minmetals Corp started attracting attention from investors on Wednesday morning, taking bids for a dollar offering divided into a five and 10 year.

Guangzhou Rural Commercial Bank has mandated a quartet of banks for a Hong Kong listing that could be worth around $1.5bn, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Just a few weeks apart, announcements were recently made by the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (HKEX) and Singapore’s SGX respectively about changes to front line regulatory functions they perform. The approaches under these proposals couldn’t have been more different, writes Philippe Espinasse.