Northeast Asia

Is pricing in the Asian loan syndications market finally bottoming out? All the signs for an uptick in margins this year are there, writes Pan Yue.

Two senior Morgan Stanley bankers are set to retire from the US investment bank this year.

Considerably cheap valuations have made Weimob, a Tencent Holdings-backed company that is on the road with its Hong Kong IPO, an attractive proposition for equity investors, according to a source close to the listing.

In the first round-up of 2019, China’s economy slowed further in December, renminbi-denominated central bank reserves fell in the third quarter of last year, and the US and China exchanged some positive signals on trade.

Futu Holdings, parent of Hong Kong-based Futu Securities International, is planning a Nasdaq IPO of up to $300m.

CIMC Vehicles Co is eyeing $500m from a Hong Kong IPO, with plans to launch the listing by the end of the first quarter, according to a source close to the deal.

Asian issuers are setting the stage for their fundraisings nice and early into the New Year, with South Korea’s Hanwha Total Petrochemical Co announcing a bond mandate on Wednesday morning.

Q3 Medical Devices is looking to raise around €125m ($142m) through an IPO in Hong Kong, according to a release.

In this round up, Bank of China’s monthly index shows decreasing onshore funding cost, Value Partners’ flagship fund became MRF-eligible and a quarterly London RMB business report shows that the city still leads the way on offshore RMB trading in Europe.

In this round-up, Chinese president Xi Jinping’s speech at the celebration of China’s reform and opening up offered no concrete promises, the People’s Bank of China reopened the seven-day reverse repo after 36 days of suspension, and China dropped its holding of US government bonds for the fifth consecutive month.

The decision to further postpone the ETF Connect between China and Hong Kong offers an opportunity to improve the mutual recognition of funds (MRF) scheme. In a recent report, Ernst & Young and the Hong Kong Investment Funds Association offered the authorities some suggestions.

As central banks retreat from public markets, spreads are widening in dollars and euros, and cross-currency basis swaps are improving for international borrowers, Swiss bankers believe the good times might be returning to a market once known the world over for diversification and arbitrage.