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In March, casino operator Genting Singapore’s S$1.8 billion ($1.46 billion) perpetual subordinated capital securities marked the company’s inaugural bond issuance and its first foray into the Singapore dollar bond markets. The deal was the largest corporate hybrid in a local-currency market in Asia, the largest Singapore dollar-denominated corporate hybrid issue to date and the largest single-tranche Singapore dollar-denominated bond to date. According to HSBC, the deal attracted an overwhelming response from international and domestic investors, with participation from offshore accounts to the tune of 42% of the total deal size. The allocation was also well spread out regionally, with 58% of the offering distributed in Singapore, 24% in Malaysia, 12% in Hong Kong and 6% to Europe and elsewhere.

"Scaling down an investment bank, particularly its derivatives positions, is a bit like shutting down a nuclear reactor. That’s something you do only very slowly and by keeping all your best and highest-paid engineers to do it"

The same month brought another impressive debt deal from the Gulf, this time from International Petroleum Investment Corporation (Ipic), Abu Dhabi’s state-backed investment group for the energy sector worldwide. This was a big, multi-currency offering, raising $2.9 billion equivalent in three tranches: a $750 million three-year, a €800 million 5.5-year and a €850 million 10.5-year.

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Wall Street traders typically believe that the business of profiting from capital flows works best with minimal interference, but given the impact that the US government, in the form of the Federal Reserve, had on the structured finance market last year their perceptions might well have changed.

International capital markets underwent a remarkable recovery last year as bond and equity markets soared, creating a fertile dealmaking environment that few had foreseen at the start of the year. By the end, an impressive volume and variety of capital raisings had hit the markets, highlighting a voracious appetite for risk and complexity that bankers were only too happy to satisfy. Even in M&A.

High-grade corporate borrowers also took advantage of strong external conditions to raise substantial chunks of funding at ultra-tight spreads, most notably in the case of Rosneft’s $3 billion dual-tranche market return in late November – but the deal that caught the eye towards the end of the year was October’s more modest $600 million five-year debut from double-B rated issuer Brunswick Rail.

Although so often in the past a harbinger of increased M&A dealmaking activity, rising equity markets failed to ignite the revival that advisory bankers had been hoping for last year.

When a prime gas infrastructure asset is put up for sale in one of the richest and most powerful and well-regulated economies in the world it will always attract interest from potential acquirers keen to snap up a prized asset that could deliver attractive long-term returns.

PICC’s December IPO in Hong Kong was the largest IPO to come out of the special administrative region in nearly two years.