Singapore

Logistics real estate developer ESR Cayman turned to the Singapore dollar market this week to bring down its cost of funding, adding S$150m ($110m) to its coffers.

Law firm Ashurst, which operates in Singapore through its foreign law alliance Ashurst ADTLaw, has appointed Michelle Phang as co-lead of its corporate transactions team in the city-state.

Everbright Water, a subsidiary of the state-owned China Everbright Group, has raised Rmb700m ($103m) from a five year Panda bond.

Investors in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the US can now begin to trade onshore Chinese bonds through Bloomberg terminals. The new access channel should slowly boost liquidity in China’s secondary bond market, said onshore bankers.

BNP Paribas made a comeback to the Singapore dollar bond market to shore up its capital, bringing the year’s first Basel III-compliant tier two outing in the currency.

ASM Pacific Technology is tapping the offshore loan market for the first time, raising a HK$2.25bn ($287m) five year borrowing to refinance a convertible bond maturing in March.

China’s effort to deleverage and rebalance the economy will be tested in 2019 as corporate defaults rise, hidden local government debts surface, and liquidity for the private sector gets squeezed, according to a January 7 poll by S&P.

In this round-up, China’s foreign exchange reserves rebounded slightly for the second month in a row, Standard Chartered’s index for international RMB usage fell again, and China's consumer price index (CPI) inflation decelerated at the close of 2018.

Cromwell European Real Estate Investment Trust (CEReit) has wrapped up a well-oversubscribed rights issue, raising €224.1m to fund the acquisition of various properties across Europe.

In this round-up, total social financing (TSF) rebounded in November, auto sales plummeted for the fifth consecutive month, and Standard Chartered’s renminbi globalisation index (RGI) fell for the first time in six months.

Goldman Sachs International conducted business with Lars Windhorst, the colourful German financier, despite warnings from its compliance department that he was a high risk counterparty.

Nicholas Chia has left OCBC to join CLSA as the Citic Securities-owned brokerage looks to build out its southeast Asia equity capital markets franchise.