Awards for Excellence 2019
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Our review period embraced a curious 12 months of market performance in which bankers needed to be able to deliver a wide range of financing options to clients. Sometimes it needed high-yield debt, sometimes structured finance, sometimes just the protective arm of the balance sheet until brighter times arrived.
HSBC will not always be in the running for this award – it’s not strong enough in equity – but last year, when many of the landmark tech and bank IPOs in the region plunged in the aftermarket, was the sort of environment within which the bank excels for financing.
Clearly, HSBC is among the volume leaders in ex-Japan Asia loans, G3 bonds and local currency debt, but just scale is not enough to win it this award (and in any event, Bank of China and Standard Chartered lent more).
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| Che-Ning Liu |
What differentiated HSBC during our review period was that it was just as comfortable leading high-yield deals for ReNew Power, Sunac, Shimao Property and the Development Bank of Mongolia as it was in providing $1 billion-plus bridge or syndicated facilities for Haitong, NWS Holdings, Country Garden or Anta Sports with FountainVest Partners.
It was a leader in bank capital and corporate hybrids, for clients including Shanghai Commercial Bank, Towngas, Doosan Power Systems and Thailand’s Minor International, and at the same time provided nuanced work in structured finance, leading the first internationally triple-A-rated Chinese residential mortgage backed security in 2018 for China Construction Bank, and asset-backed notes for JD.com.
That deal for Minor is interesting in illustrating that HSBC is not, as some insist, just a commoditized debt machine. The deal, a rare offshore financing for a Thai issuer that isn’t state-owned or a bank, and especially an unrated one, rested upon a host of third-party guarantees, obligations and backstops in the background, culminating in a well-received $300 million perpetual non-call three year Reg S offering. In the NWS deal, a HK$16.5 billion ($2.1 billion) senior unsecured bridge facility was just part of a range of roles helping the issuer acquire FTLife Insurance.
Also very much in the mix was the bank’s strength in sustainable finance – see more on this in the eponymous award – where it was green structuring adviser for 18 bond deals during our review period. It handled the world’s first green convertible bond in real estate (for Link Reit), and the first UN Sustainable Development Goals sukuk (for HSBC Amanah Malaysia), as well as the world’s first sustainable bond from a university for Macquarie University, and the first ever social bond from Korea, for Industrial Bank of Korea.
Che-Ning Liu, co-head of Asia Pacific global banking, talks about evolution not revolution, with gradual incremental additions to the platform, alongside continuing collaboration with the commercial and private banking arms.
This year’s big incremental shift was the move to operational status of the bank’s mainland JV, HSBC Qianhai. It is already doing good business.
