Southeast Asia

Indofood CBP Sukses Makmur made its dollar debut this week with a dual tranche $1.75bn bond. The Indonesian noodle maker overcame investor scepticism about its fundraising strategy by selling long-dated notes that saw a strong reception from the market. Morgan Davis reports.

Loans bankers focused on Vietnam have had to quickly adapt their syndication strategy for deals from the country amid a new surge in Covid-19 cases. Their approaches have differed: while some banks are charging ahead with transactions, others are opting to delay deals. Pan Yue reports.

Philippine company SMC Global Power Holdings Corp returned to the dollar bond market for the first time this year on Wednesday, meeting strong-enough demand to boost the size of its deal and offer just a small premium.

The Singapore Exchange has hired a senior Goldman Sachs banker to lead its global sales and origination business.

Cambodia’s Acleda Bank has returned to the loan market after a three-year absence, and is testing lenders’ appetite for three different deals simultaneously.

Vietnam’s VNDirect Securities Corp has tapped the offshore loan market for the first time for a $50m borrowing.

Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand Group, which tapped the loan market for a $7.2bn bridge loan last year to acquire retail giant Tesco’s Asia business, is now seeking covenant waivers on the fundraising. The move — which bankers say is triggered in part by CP’s plan to offload some of its newly-gained stake in Tesco — has hurt lenders’ confidence in the Thai conglomerate and raised questions around its strategy. Pan Yue reports.

Frasers Logistics & Commercial Trust has raised S$335.8m ($253.05m) after pricing a placement of new units at the top of the marketed range.

Frasers Logistics & Commercial Trust kicked off a one day follow-on offering of new stock on Monday, aiming to raise at least S$299.8m ($225.3m).

Indonesia's dollar bonds were among the top performing investment grade notes in Asia last week, buoyed by signs of the country’s recovery from the pandemic.

Singapore real estate investment trust Mapletree Industrial Trust has raised S$823.3m ($618.3m) from a sale of new units to fund data centre acquisitions, with the deal receiving a warm welcome from investors despite not being very well flagged.

Covered bonds issued this week by United Overseas Bank and Raiffeisen-Landesbank Steiermark showed that, for the first time this year, sentiment has turned bearish and suggested that more careful consideration of pricing, timing and maturity is now required.