Northeast Asia

Wuhan Financial Holdings (Group) Co found an opportunity to return to the bond market with a $300m tap, getting strong support from its 10-member syndicate team.

Asia’s IPO market burst into life this month, with issuers in Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and the Philippines testing investor appetite for their listings. While the resurgence is welcome after a bleak year for issuance so far, it is likely to be short lived, with a lot also resting on early movers’ performances.

Chinese company Avic International Leasing Co is seeking a $150m syndicated loan. It has mandated First Abu Dhabi Bank as the lead, the first time the Middle Eastern lender has bookrun a Chinese deal on a sole basis.

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) is reducing the amount of money that banks need to hold as reserves, a long-overdue move that analysts said is just one of many more easing measures to be implemented in the country.

In this round-up, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) announced both broad-based and targeted reserve requirement ratio cuts, China’s exports dropped further and Hong Kong witnessed another weekend of protests despite the withdrawal of the extradition bill.

Topsports International Holdings has kicked off pre-marketing for its Hong Kong SAR listing, which is expected to raise around $1bn, according to sources close to the deal.

Dollar bond investors have shrugged off Fitch’s downgrade to the foreign currency rating of Hong Kong SAR, with local issuers also gearing up for new deals.

South Korean energy company SK E&S Co has bagged HK$5.1bn ($650.7m) after selling a block of shares in China Gas Holdings, a source close to the deal told GlobalCapital Asia.

In this round-up, JPMorgan has decided to include Chinese government bonds into its government bond index for emerging markets, Fitch downgrades Hong Kong by one notch to AA and Caixin manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) declines in August.

In this round-up, the US and China agree to meet in October in Washington, Hong Kong's chief executive formally withdraws the extradition bill and the Chinese state council is set to release local government bond quotas for 2020 early.

Six Greater China borrowers, including Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Macau) and an unrated property developer, have wooed bond investors to their new dollar deals.

China’s Youyuan International Holdings, a wrapping tissue paper maker, has defaulted on a total of HK$2.6bn ($332m) of debt, including a $135m loan sealed in April.