Myanmar

A $390m loan backing CVC Capital Partners’ acquisition of Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Green Towers (IGT) was abruptly put on hold this week after political turmoil rocked the country following a military coup. Pan Yue reports.

The Yangon Stock Exchange will be open for trading by international investors from March 20, according to an announcement by Myanmar’s securities regulator.

Logistics conglomerate Ever Flow River Group (EFR) has won approval from the Yangon Stock Exchange to join its sparsely populated board.

In less than a decade, Myanmar has gone from a mysterious country shut off from the outside world to a burgeoning frontier market with plenty of investment opportunities. The government has made tremendous strides, opening up to outside money. But for Myanmar to become a real success story, it needs to fully welcome foreign capital.

Myanmar has made a raft of regulatory changes to attract foreign investment, removing ownership limits and cutting red tape. But senior figures in the country admit that poor infrastructure is a major problem — and the solution requires private capital. Morgan Davis reports.

The issuance of two currency-linked notes on the private market should help stimulate local currency markets in Myanmar and Ukraine according to one syndicate banker.

In this round-up, China and the US will talk in Beijing at the end of the week, China’s interbank payment and settlement system survived the Lunar New Year red packet frenzy and a draft of the foreign investment law will be submitted in early March.

Yoma Strategic Holdings has become the first company from Myanmar to sell an international bond, raising the equivalent of $70m in the Thai baht market.

TMH Telecom Public Co will list on the Yangon Stock Exchange in Myanmar next week, having held an IPO that included a chunk of primary shares — the first flotation in the country with new stock.

Myanmar’s TMH Telecom Public Co is preparing to launch an IPO on the Yangon Stock Exchange, which will make it the fifth listing on the budding bourse.

This article is the third part in a series of four on China’s Belt and Road Initiative that we are publishing during the 2017 IMF-World Bank annual meetings in Washington DC. We have devoted two articles to the Road element and two to the Belt element, of which this piece is the first and focuses on the Asian part of the overland route

Myanmar may be in the middle of a crisis as more than half a million Rohingya flee anti-Muslim militants. But investors are willing to look past the humanitarian crisis and find opportunities in the frontier market.

Myanmar’s equity capital market is set for fresh impetus as a handful of companies line up IPOs, with a member of the regulatory body predicting it will be the shot in the arm needed for a market that has slipped into obscurity this year. But although more issuers will be welcome, it is a change in the investor base that is really needed.

Foreign investors look set to be allowed into Myanmar's capital markets soon, with new laws close to approval. The news is very welcome as growth has stalled in the country's markets since the first shares started trading on the Yangon exchange last year. However, any celebrations must be tempered by the experiences of Myanmar's neighbouring countries and it must take care to avoid similar pitfalls.

A year after the country’s new government passed a financial institutions law to modernize a creaking banking system, Yangon’s licensed commercial bankers are still waiting for regulators to implement the reforms and make the system fit for purpose. In the meantime, savvy locals are trying to get on with building a banking industry

MYANMAR

Myanmar’s elite are having to adapt to new realities. For Htoo Htet Tay Za, head of AGD Bank, that means trying to create a modern bank in a backward financial system while battling allegations of cronyism levelled against his family

Myanmar’s First Private Bank will become the fourth name to list on the country’s budding exchange, with its shares set to start trading on January 20.

A subsidiary of Malaysian telecommunications company Axiata Group has expanded the bookrunner group of a $400m loan, which was overhauled and boosted from the original $100m in November.

Myanmar’s capital market is set for a fillip in 2017 from foreign investors who will gain greater access thanks to new laws coming into force. Expectations are high but the country will be wary of letting any momentum fade, as has happened to some of its neighbours. Jonathan Breen reports.

A subsidiary of Malaysian telecommunications company Axiata Group, which approached the loan market for $100m in June, is overhauling and increasing the financing to $400m to fund potential acquisitions.

ASEAN’s capital markets regulators are working on a plan to grow the domestic bond markets of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV), with the Securities and Exchange Commission Cambodia (SECC) leading the charge.

State-owned Vietnam Engine and Agricultural Machinery Corp has clinched an IPO worth D2.1tr ($95.8m) after selling shares on the Hanoi Stock Exchange, according to a disclosure with the bourse.

Local outfit Myanmar Citizens Bank officially floated its shares on the Yangon Stock Exchange on Friday, the third ever listing on the YSX.