Search results for

China Aviation Oil (Singapore) Corporation (CAO) the Singapore-listed subsidiary of mainland Chinese aviation fuel importer China Aviation Oil Holding Company (CAOH) announced in December a successful debt restructuring including significant investments from BP Investments Asia and Temasek Holdings.

“OK, if there were a big credit event, and if it coincided with one of the dealers going down, there would be a problem. How many ‘ifs’ do they want?”

In an historic move in late November, the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, conducted the first ever swap of renminbi with the US dollar, a move that it intends to repeat fortnightly.

With just weeks to go before the SEC’s new hedge fund regulation comes into force, its legitimacy has been questioned by a federal appeals court. Philip Goldstein has been challenging the rule in court, arguing that the regulator does not have the power to alter or make law [see Euromoney March 2005]. Although it was widely supposed that Goldstein’s complaints would go unnoticed, judges in the case last month questioned whether the SEC had overstepped its authority. A decision is expected in two months.

Greece’s economy grew faster than expected in 2005. But its government faces a major challenge in 2006: to maintain its strong growth rate while complying with the EU directive to cut its budget deficit by the end of the year. By Dimitris Kontogiannis.

Thailand faces a looming pensions crisis. Its government is already moving down the path of reform but its critics don’t like the direction in which the programme is headed. Chris Leahy reports from Bangkok.

Excitement over corporate hybrids has been replaced by hopes of a boom in M&A refinancing.

Weak execution caused by the end-of-year rush to issue was mostly limited to the CMBS sector. Execution lower down the capital structure suffered the most, with triple B notes hitting three-month Euribor plus 100 basis points, a level not seen for more than 18 months.

In December, the UK’s Financial Services Authority held a meeting with the Association of British Insurers setting out its position on securitization and reinsurance for life insurers. All year there had been talk of monetization being a big story. Legal and General has been rumoured to have mandated a structuring mandate, and Standard Life was looking at both new business strain and value in force (VIF) structures before being overwhelmed with the process of demutualization. There has been talk of VIF securitizations coming from France and the Netherlands. However, some originators argue that the cost effectiveness of this approach is far from proved and question whether the six months or so spent working on structures is worth it. Also the competitiveness of reinsurance has improved dramatically in response to the capital market, especially for one-year maturity. But for a five-year maturity, a reinsurance treaty is twice as expensive as a capital markets solution. It appears that the FSA is trying to give greater guidance to issuers and arrangers on how to streamline the process; there are hopes for as many as four deals in 2006.

With the Bombay Sensex, India’s benchmark index, hitting new highs, it is perhaps not surprising that December saw India’s second largest ever equity deal and one of the biggest deals in Asia in 2005. Leading private sector bank ICICI Bank raised more than $1.5 billion from a local and American depositary share offering through Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.

Speak to any of the CROs working at EFG International and they are almost evangelical about the benefits of working for the Swiss-based firm.

The sales pitch for the EFG International IPO in October 2005 was that the bank would use the proceeds to continue to grow over the next three to five years at a comparable rate to the impressive expansion of the recent past.