IFR Asia – May 05, 2018

(Jacob Rumans) #1
WHO’S MOVING WHERE...
„ Ivan Lee has joined BANK OF COMMUNICATIONS^
Hong Kong branch as deputy chief product
manager in the structured and capital finance
department.
He came on board late last month and reports
to Carmen Chen, general manager of the
department.
Before that, Lee had worked at Standard
Chartered since August 2011 and was
most recently a director in the bank’s loan
syndications team.

„ Barrett Lu, an executive director and co-head
of China fixed income capital markets at MORGAN
STANLEY, has left the US bank.
His departure marks an end to a decade-long
stint after he joined Morgan Stanley in Hong
Kong in February 2008.
Before that, Lu worked in the loan syndications
teams at China CITIC Bank International and
Standard Chartered.

„ Neha Agarwal has been promoted to co-head
of capital markets at Indian financial services
provider JM FINANCIAL, a person with knowledge
of the development has said.
Agarwal was earlier a director in the capital
markets group.
Agarwal will report to Manish Prasad, CEO of
institutional equities. Chitresh Mody is the other
co-head of capital markets.
Agarwal joined JM in 2006.
JM Financial was not immediately available for
comment.

„ Eddie Law, ANZ’s former global head of
institutional property, is moving to Australian
real estate investor MAXCAP GROUP as chief
investment director for New South Wales,
Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory.
He will start his new role on May 14 after leaving
ANZ in April.
Chaired by Australia’s former Prime Minister
Paul Keating, MaxCap specialises in the
placement of private and institutional funds
into residential and commercial real estate
investments, with a focus on development
assets. The group has invested over A$3bn
(US$2.3bn) in the Australian property sector.

„ Eddie Wong, a director in the Asia Pacific loan
syndications team at CREDIT SUISSE, has left the
firm after a stint of nearly five years.
Wong’s departure comes within weeks of the
appointment of Sergio Morita as Credit Suisse’s
head of syndication and distribution for the Asia
Pacific financing group in March.
Morita replaced Ashish Sharma, the Swiss bank’s
APAC loans chief, who quit earlier that month.
Wong was based in Hong Kong and reported to
Morita. He handled loan syndications for North
Asia.
During his five-year stint, he was involved in
high-profile and event-driven financings from
North Asia such as the multi-billion dollar loan
for China National Chemical Corp’s acquisition
of Swiss seeds and pesticides maker Syngenta
and its US$5.5bn refinancing earlier this year,
as well as the US$900m-equivalent loan last

September for the leveraged buyout of Hong
Kong fixed-line telephone company Hutchison
Global Communications.
Before joining Credit Suisse in July 2013, Wong
had worked in loan syndications at ANZ for
nearly five years.

„ RBC CAPITAL MARKETS has hired two bankers in
Sydney as part of a push into leveraged finance.
The Canadian bank has recruited Hamish
Mitchell to lead Australian leveraged finance
and added Harry Staple as a director in the
syndication, corporate banking and leveraged
finance group.
International lenders, including Barclays, Intesa
Sanpaolo and Societe Generale, are beefing
up their operations in Australia in a bid to win
market share as tighter regulation and capital
requirements take their toll on the domestic
lenders.
Mitchell was previously at Goldman Sachs
in New York and Sydney, while Staple was a
director in Westpac Institutional Bank’s loans
and syndications team in Melbourne. Staple
reports to Amy Promaine, managing director for
corporate banking, who is on secondment from
New York.
RBC has also promoted Sean Miller to head up
the investment bank in Australia following the
relocation of Dominic Hudson to London to lead
sector coverage for Europe. Miller was previously
running the structuring capital advisory team,
while Tim Foy, director of infrastructure, has
expanded his responsibilities to include M&A.
A spokesman for the bank confirmed the
appointments.

People


&Markets


IN BRIEF
People's Bank of China
Resumption of RQDII scheme

The People’s Bank of China last week signalled
the resumption of the outbound investment
scheme that allows qualified domestic financial
institutions to buy renminbi-denominated
products in overseas markets.
In a notice on its website, the PBoC updated the
regulations governing the Renminbi Qualified
Domestic Institutional Investors programme,
which was suspended unofficially in late 2015
along with several other outbound schemes
amid fears of capital flight and worries of rapid
currency depreciation.
The latest announcement suggests Beijing is
gradually relaxing the outbound investment
scheme.
The PBoC notice says the renminbi must not
be converted into foreign currencies under the
scheme for overseas investment. In addition,
RQDII investors must submit investment details

to the central bank, and are subject to PBoC’s
macro prudential assessment.
Last month, China resumed the Qualified
Domestic Institution Investor scheme, which
allows Chinese investors to convert renminbi into
foreign currencies to buy overseas securities.
The foreign exchange regulator has also
widened the quotas of two other outbound
investment schemes in Shanghai and Shenzhen
as part of the government’s efforts to liberalise
financial markets.

HNA Group
SkyBridge bid dropped

HNA GROUP’s bid to buy a majority stake in
SkyBridge Capital, a hedge fund investment
firm founded by US President Donald Trump’s
former aide Anthony Scaramucci, has been
called off after facing repeated delays in getting
approval from the Committee on Foreign
Investment in the United States.

HNA and SkyBridge said in a statement they
found that it was not in their interests to pursue
the transaction as significant time had passed
since the deal was first announced and due to
the “uncertain timing” of the approval process.
SkyBridge and HNA Capital, a unit of the HNA
Group, now plan to explore the development
of a “mutually beneficial marketing and
distribution arrangement” of SkyBridge’s
offerings in China, the statement said.
Scaramucci, who last year had a tumultuous
10-day stint as White House communications
director, will return to the firm as co-managing
partner to focus on strategic planning and
marketing efforts, according to the statement.
The Chinese conglomerate first announced in
January 2017 that it was buying a majority stake
in SkyBridge. HNA and SkyBridge have never
disclosed the terms of the investment.
Two people familiar with the matter but who
declined to be identified due to sensitivity of the
subject, have said the deal could not close as
CFIUS had declined to accept an application to
review the transaction, which in effect prevented
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