South Korea

Mitsubishi UFJ Securities (HK) has hired former Barclays banker Alan Choi as executive director for the capital markets group, effective from April 5.

Korea Resources Corp (KoRes) managed to brush away concerns about Moody’s decision to review its rating for a downgrade, raising more than expected from its latest bond outing. The deal’s high quality order book stood out when compared with some other recent transactions from peers.

Korea Resources Corp (KoRes) is poised for its first appearance of the year in the international bond market, opening books on Monday for a Reg S dollar offering.

The Korea Exchange (KRX) has been busy this year, setting up specialist groups and a new marketing department to promote its bourse to international issuers. KRX’s senior manager for the global marketing department, Jae Hwa Oh, told Jonathan Breen that the goal, among others, is to make South Korea a financial hub in Asia.

Korea National Oil Corp (KNOC) navigated a crowded primary market on Tuesday to seal a $1bn dual-tranche bond. Thanks to the credit’s safe-haven status, onshore investors piled in, allowing the firm to price the deal flat to its existing curves.

It goes without saying that things have not gone according to plan for Asia’s equity capital markets this past quarter. The numbers are sobering and the reality is that ECM has seen some fundamental shifts as deal origination and execution become more non-traditional. But that does not have to be a bad thing.

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.

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.

Kia Motors Corp is ready to hit the road for a 144A/Reg S bond that could come to the market as early as mid April.

China's Fosun International is planning to spin off and list wholly-owned insurance subsidiary Ironshore, according to a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Korea Development Bank (KDB) sold two tranches of floating rate notes on March 18, in a transaction that was driven by reverse enquiry from Taiwanese banks.