Asiamoney New Silk Road Finance Awards

Being present at the creation of the Belt and Road Initiative must be like life at the start of the internet. Everyone knew it would be huge – but it wasn’t clear at first what that really meant.

HSBC’s history in China and southeast Asia stretches back to the latter part of the 19th Century. And while experience doesn’t count for everything, it counts for quite a bit in this case. No lender has surely been more effective at finding, funding and facilitating belt-and-road deals in southeast Asia.

Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) consistently puts itself in a strong position to serve both Chinese companies expanding into Thailand and local firms making the return journey.

To all China-based lenders, the Belt and Road Initiative is serious business. But few have poured so much of their labours and resources into promoting BRI-related projects at all levels as ICBC (Asia).

United Overseas Bank’s regional ambitions were underlined in April when the Singapore lender priced a three-year, renminbi-denominated bond, raising S$208.6 million ($150 million). The bond issue, which was oversubscribed 2.86 times, was the first financial bond printed in China by a southeast Asian institution using Beijing’s Bond Connect scheme, which gives foreign investors access to the mainland’s debt markets.

Standard Chartered is tailor-made for China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The bank, which has a strong focus on emerging markets, opened its first branch in Shanghai in 1858, and in Singapore and Hong Kong a year later. It has a footprint in all 10 Asean nations, with 26 branches in Indonesia, 27 offices in Thailand, and more than 40 in Malaysia, not to mention a presence in 28 cities in mainland China.

This award was keenly contested. Standard Chartered deserves credit for being appointed escrow agent on the construction of the new Nepal International Airport, funded by a $216 million loan from Export-Import Bank of China. And Credit Suisse stands out for its $65.1 million term loan to Housing Development Corporation, a state-owned Maldivian firm, which will finance the construction of 7,000 social housing units on the sprawling island chain that sits at the heart of the Maritime Silk Road.

HBL is the standout winner of this award, for four connected reasons. First, because HBL is the biggest bank in Pakistan. Second, it’s the biggest provider of infrastructure financing in Pakistan. Third, it is clearly China’s most-trusted local commercial banking partner in south Asia – see our award for best regional bank of the year for BRI. And fourth, because Pakistan is the beating heart of China’s Belt and Road Initiative – no country has benefited more, or bought in so deeply, to president Xi Jinping’s vision of a new geopolitical trade map that starts in China, but ends up pretty much anywhere in Africa, Europe or Asia.

No lender in south Asia can compete with Standard Chartered’s scale, strength, pocketbook and willingness to go the extra yard for its clients. Over the last year, it has done more complex regional deals that use Chinese money, involve mainland corporates and enhance and expand the New Silk Road project than any of its peers.