UBS

Banks have started marketing the sterling loan to fund the acquisition of a stake in Westbury Street Holdings, the parent company of Searcy’s champagne bars and Benugo coffee bars, with a £363m seven year term loan and a £91m eight year second lien on offer.

Chinese property issuers led the reopening of Asia’s offshore bond market following a week-long holiday in the Mainland to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Investors responded to the new deals with enthusiasm.

Hong Kong’s Towngas has priced a rare dollar perpetual bond, taking $300m from a deal that saw investors pump in more than $4bn in orders.

Financial institutions bond bankers are hoping that the additional tier one market is back in fashion with investors, after UBS was able to attract a whopping $16bn of orders for a $2.5bn transaction this week.

Rating: A3/—/A+

Asia’s sustainability market took a big step forward this week when Kookmin Bank priced a Basel III-compliant tier two bond with a sustainability label — the first of its kind in the region. Morgan Davis reports.

Chinese electric car company Nio made a splash in the US convertible bond market this week, raising $650m from its debut issuance and using a call spread feature to engineer a tasty premium. Jonathan Breen reports.

Nio, the Chinese electric car company, has launched bookbuilding for a convertible bond that will be worth as much as $650m, according to a source close to the deal.

Società per la Gestione di Attività (SGA), Italy’s bad loan management vehicle, is preparing to sell its first senior unsecured bond in the euro market. The company’s funding needs have risen amid a growing focus on cleaning up the Italian banking sector.

‘Tier two’ and ‘sustainability’ are labels that have never previously been combined in Asia. At least not until this week, when Kookmin Bank raised $450m from a Basel III-compliant deal.

There was a wall of supply from Chinese property companies at the start of the week. Road King Infrastructure and Yuzhou Properties brought a pair of callable four year bonds, but Jingrui Holdings and Fantasia Holdings Group both stuck to the very short-end of the curve.

Chinese new economy company Maoyan Entertainment priced its Hong Kong IPO this week, after a short delay that allowed it to add a high-profile cornerstone investor. Don’t let the deal’s bottom-of-the-range pricing fool you: the company and its banks made the right move.