Morgan Stanley

Commodities trader Noble Group has decided to raise about S$719m ($522m) through a rights issue as it seeks ways to pay off outstanding debt.

The race is on for India’s first insurance IPO as ICICI Prudential Life Insurance lines up banks for its up to $400m float.

The wave of rights issues and capital raisings in the market this summer is so far going smoothly, with good news this week for Banco Popular Español, as its shares and rights perked up in trading.

Convertible investors in Europe gobbled up an unusually large deal on Wednesday from a Japanese issuer, Kansai Paint Co, which raised ¥100bn with a two tranche structure, of which one tranche appealed more to hedge funds and the other to outright investors.

Panama-based Bladex became the second Latin American issuer to hit the increasingly popular Tokyo Pro-Bond market, whose flexibility is making access to yen easier for issuers.

Majorca-based travel services operator Hotelbeds has released price guidance on its €490m cov-lite seven year term loan ‘B’ following bank meetings on Tuesday in London.

The Asia ex-Japan block trade market took flight this week as three overnight share sales priced on Wednesday, two of which were executed by Morgan Stanley and one by UBS.

Political turmoil has stopped from Croatia printing its planned euro Reg S issue, having completed a two day roadshow for the deal on Tuesday.

Verisure, the B2/B rated Swedish alarms systems company, had accelerated commitments due at 3pm on Thursday for its €1.02bn term loan ‘B’.

Kitty Leung, who worked in the loan syndication department at Rabobank in Hong Kong, has left the Dutch lender.

Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp has wrapped up a landmark $8.9bn sell-down in Alibaba Group Holdings through a combination of five separate transactions, including raising $5.5bn via the sale of mandatory exchangeable trust securities (METS). The size of the METS is impressive, making it the largest equity-linked deal globally since 2010, but it also came with a structure almost never seen before in Asia. Jonathan Breen reports.

Google is exiting its stake in Lenovo Group via an overnight offering of shares that could raise as much as HK$1.72bn ($221m).