Asiamoney China Securitization Awards

Many ABS deals in China caught Asiamoney’s attention this year, whether from new issuers and asset classes or because they came with structural innovations.

Among China’s securities houses, China International Capital Corp impressed Asiamoney the most with its ability to innovate.

Bank of Communications has led or jointly led many landmark deals in China since it received its first ABS underwriting licence in 2013, and its peers, including foreign firms, have noticed.

When it comes to international banks operating in China’s securitization market, HSBC is an outlier – not because of its market dominance, but because of its strategy for the asset class.

Since setting up the ABS department in 2006, Citic Securities has become an indisputable leader in the market.

Bank of China continues to lead the way in asset-backed securitization in mainland China, making it a clear choice for the best domestic bank for securitization award.

Since the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) reformed the country’s benchmark rate system in August 2019, many banks have linked their RMBS trades to the new five-year loan prime rate (LPR). But the underlying mortgages of their RMBS deals were still linked to the old benchmark rate. As a result, linking their RMBS to the new five-year LPR created a rate mismatch between the asset side and the securities side.

The legal landscape in China around the securitization industry is often hard to navigate. But King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) stands out from its peers. The law firm provided legal services for 254 securitization transactions with a total value of Rmb296.2 billion ($45.4 billion) during the awards period, according to Wind data.