Southeast Asia's top bond house sees robust deal flow this year

[SINGAPORE] Malayan Banking Bhd, Malaysia's top lender, is anticipating bond sales driven by deals for big Southeast Asian infrastructure projects to offset a downturn in fees from sluggish regional equity markets.

The firm, Southeast Asia's top arranger of bond sales this year, has a "robust" pipeline of deals in that space, Michael Oh-Lau, Maybank's regional head of debt capital markets, said in a Thursday interview in Singapore.

Conversely, fees from managing equity capital market deals slumped as much as 70 per cent for banks in the region in the first quarter, said John Chong, chief executive officer of Maybank's investment-banking unit.

"This year looks quite promising for debt financing," Mr Chong said in the same interview. "Where it is started on a slow track is on the equity capital market side."

Maybank is the top manager for local-currency bond sales in Southeast Asia this year with deals valued at US$1.67 billion, or a 12 per cent share of the market, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

BLOOMBERG