Few at Credit Suisse are likely to remember 2022 with great affection.
Nevertheless, the Swiss bank’s Pakistan team – led by Babur Rais, head of frontier markets – managed to successfully close two deals totalling $447 million. One was in equity capital markets, the other a structured finance transaction.
As Asiamoney went to press, Credit Suisse had at least five further deals in the pipeline, despite the economic and political turmoil facing the nation at every turn.
As Rais explains, Credit Suisse drew on its deep experience in Pakistan’s financial sector, its expansive global investor base and its battle-tested bankers steeped in Karachi’s event-rich environment to complete deals against all the odds.
The equity transaction involved the sale of Fullerton Financial Holdings’ entire stake in MCB Bank, on which Credit Suisse acted as exclusive financial adviser.
This is the second divestment that the bank has handled for Fullerton Financial Holdings, following a successful $5.9 billion divestment of its stake in Indonesia’s Bank Danamon in 2017.
Rais says such transactions speak to Credit Suisse’s capacity to pull off complex and customized cross-border transactions in the most chaotic of market environments.