Philippines

The Philippine capital markets had a tough year in 2018. Several issuers waited for market sentiment to improve, while a handful of planned fund-raisings were pulled. Against this lacklustre backdrop, First Metro Investment Corporation, the investment banking arm of the Metrobank Group, won plaudits for its innovation and timely execution, fending off rivals BDO Capital & Investment Corporation and BPI Capital.

Lending to small and medium-sized enterprises has never been easy in the Philippines. That may be surprising given that SMEs account for more than 90% of registered businesses and make a large contribution to the national economy. But poor credit information has held back what should be one of the country’s most promising market segments.

BDO Unibank is the commercial bank to beat in the Philippines. Led by veteran chief executive and president Nestor Tan, the Manila-based lender dominated much of the banking sector during the awards period.

The Republic of the Philippines returned to the samurai bond market in August, becoming the latest sovereign issuer to tap a yen investor base desperate for yield.

Expanded rankings and additional categories, including other comparative and bespoke data, are available for purchase. Please contact Mee Ling Lee at meeling.lee@euromoneyasia.com for our data packages.

The 29th annual Asiamoney Brokers Poll invited chief investment officers, fund managers and investment analysts to take part. Voters represented fund management houses, insurance companies, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds and wealth managers from around the world. A total of 6,540 valid individual responses from 3,100 different institutions, including 411 hedge funds, were received.

This southeast Asian economy is growing, but its capital markets are not. The government aims to change that by tweaking the rules on Reits and by finding a novel way to nix a muddled merger and get the debt markets working properly.

For decades, Union Bank of the Philippines has been a worthy medium-sized lender, but little more. Now, it has shaken off its shackles and is investing heavily in technology, with a view to supplanting DBS as the best digital bank in Asia. Can it succeed?

Both Japan and China are competing for the right to finance and build new infrastructure worth trillions of dollars in the Philippines and other parts of southeast Asia.