Fri, 22 Jan: SG: URA Private Home Prices QoQ (8:30AM), US: Markit US Manufacturing PMI (10:45PM)
Last Week Summary
Primary debt markets in Asia started the year strongly despite increased market volatility
and funding stresses from Chinese SOE and real estate sectors. Asia G3 new issue market priced USD37.51bn of deals in the first 2 weeks of January, just a shade shy of the first 2 weeks of January 2020 (USD38.9bn). Chinese real estate issuers took full advantage of the window of opportunity early in the first week to push through 22 deals totalling USD7.7bn. The momentum, however, was slowed with the developing narrative on China Fortune Land coming into focus. China Fortune Land also received a downgrade to B2 by Moody’s on Wednesday this week, due to heightened refinancing risk.
Singapore Airlines raised USD 500mm in its first US dollar bond issue, pricing 5.5yr bonds at T+260bps to yield 3.085%. The transaction attracted strong market interests pushing order books to be 5.7x oversubscribed, eventually pricing 40bps tighter from the initial price guidance. The net proceeds from the issue will be used for aircraft purchases and aircraft related payments. The bonds traded extremely well in the secondary market, tightening 50bps by Friday morning.
A wholly-owned special purpose vehicle of Hong Kong-listed Guoco Group intends to make a voluntary conditional cash offer of S$0.70 per share to take GL Limited private and delist it from the Singapore Exchange.
Agrifood giant Olam International has priced S$250mn of perpetual securities at 5.375%, following an intraday book-building exercise.
