Consolidation in a constrained market

The ebb and Flow of the Asian debt and equity markets in the past three years has inevitably brought upheavals in investment banking in the region, and it looks as if there are more to come. Avinder Bindra, Citibank's outgoing head of global loan products of Asia, Japan and Australia, foresees continued consolidation among banks, with the number of loan arrangers already diminishing because of mergers involving Chase and Chemical, Deutsche Bank and Citibank. Twenty years ago there were 20 loan arrangers on the scene, now there are eight or 10 globally. There are tentative signs of the Japanese banks coming back into the Asian market and rebuilding assets. "Competition is there for banking lending that would not have been the case a year ago," says David Russell, executive director for debt capital markets at Nomura International in Hong Kong.