Singapore

The Asia DCM market opened to a slew of issuance on Tuesday with Singapore duo Olam International and PSA International, Korea National Oil Corp and Japanese lender Mizuho Financial Group looking to tie up their respective dollar transactions.

In this round-up, MSCI announced that its review of A-shares is underway, eight new institutional investors received RQFII licenses in 2016, Hong Kong saw further falls in RMB deposits and cross-border RMB trade settlement, and Bank of China saw two RMB internationalisation indices drop recently. Plus, a recap of our top stories this week.

Standard & Poor’s has cut its credit ratings on Standard Chartered group entities by one notch, becoming the last of the three international ratings agencies to do so over the past few months.

The vitality of the covered bond market was in no doubt over the first quarter of 2016 as volumes reached their highest level in five years.

Citi has lost its vice-chairman for Asean corporate and investment banking Tracey Woon, who is joining UBS in the third quarter of 2016.

The inevitable set of quarter end data is set to arrive as March winds down. While G3 bond volumes from southeast Asia will be disappointing, there are plenty of other reasons to be positive.

Dutch lender ABN Amro returned to the Singapore dollar bond market for the first time since 2012, raising S$450m ($331m) with a tier two offering.

Loss-making commodity trader Noble Group is in talks with banks for an unsecured borrowing of about $1.5bn to refinance existing debt.

Citi veteran David Ratliff has resigned as Asia Pacific head of the public sector group, according to an internal memo seen by GlobalCapital Asia.

Asia's debt market was crowded on Wednesday with three issuers on the hunt for their respective fundraisings ahead of the Easter holiday.

BNP Paribas has hired a banker for its loan syndicate team for southeast Asia.

ABN Amro is set to launch its second Basel III tier two trade in as many weeks and this time is opting for a Singapore dollar-denominated transaction.