MCB
This award recognises the financial institution that has done most to bring BRI-related deals to the capital markets. There’s only one viable winner: Pakistan’s MCB Bank.
The deal list starts with MCB’s role as sole bookrunner in the sale, completed in June this year, of a 40% stake in Pakistan Stock Exchange to a consortium consisting of three Chinese bourses – China Financial Futures Exchange and the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges – as well as Habib Bank and Pak China Investment (PCI).
The deal allows Chinese companies, assets and subsidiaries to list shares in one of south Asia’s best-performing markets.
MCB is working on a host of other BRI-related capital-markets deals.
It ran the books on a syndicated finance facility that funded a $121 million, four-lane expressway in the north of the country; a $21 million syndicated facility to build a biofuel-based power generation plant part-funded by PCI; and a PRs13 billion ($125 million) syndicated Islamic finance facility to pay for a new cement plant, built by Cherat Cement in the far north of the country.
That project is heavily backed by Beijing, with Tianjin Cement Industry Design & Research Institute chosen as a supplier.
Another large mainland state enterprise, Hefei Cement Research and Design Institute, based in the central province of Anhui, was chosen as a resource supplier to a $67 million project overseen by another local cement producer, Attock Cement.
MCB Bank’s strength in this award is due to its own drive, vision and ambition, and its strong presence in Pakistan, but is also a consequence of the country’s overall value, both to the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the wider BRI.