SBI Royal Securities
Shuzo Shikata’s SBI Royal Securities wins this award for its almost single-handed contribution to the emergence of a Cambodian capital market, notably its fledgling stock market.
Six years after its launch in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian Stock Exchange has just six listings, five of shares plus one bond. Three of the six listings came about through the efforts of Japanese-owned SBI Royal Securities.
The bond issue, by Cambodia’s third-largest micro-financier Hattha Kaksekar, was added while Asiamoney was in Phnom Penh and is an important step for this tiny market.
It took Shikata a year to get the Hattha Kaksekar deal away. The three-year 8.5% bond issue was anchored by the World Bank’s International Finance Corp, with local investors chipping in as well.
Importantly for a dollarized economy trying to generate confidence in its own currency, the bond was in riel and raised CR20 billion ($30 million).
True, that’s a long way in tone and total from the $300 million raised by Cambodian casino operator NagaCorp in May out of Hong Kong, the first time an issuer from Cambodia had ventured into the offshore markets.
But if Phnom Penh is going to make it in the finance business and have its own functioning capital markets, the history books will be citing SBI’s underwriting of the first-ever riel corporate bond inside Cambodia as the benchmark.