INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT BANKERS are flooding back into Jakarta. It’s just like the old days.
Not so much the equity market hotshots – for few Indonesian companies want to get listed these days or do convertible bonds. And certainly not the syndicated loan bankers who used to finance a huge market before the 1997/98 crisis but are reluctant to lose their money again. But definitely the debt capital markets bankers – who see Indonesia as being at the forefront of the long-imagined Asian high-yield market.
“In the international capital markets at the moment, Indonesia is in a sweet spot,” says Suresh Narang, chief country officer and head, global markets, at Deutsche Bank in Jakarta. “There is a high degree of convergence – you have the need for capital and the willingness to provide it.”
Indonesia was regarded as a pariah back in 2002 but there has been a fundamental change in that...
