Multitasking is clearly a skill that head of frontier markets Babur Rais and his team at Credit Suisse bring to the table in Cambodia.
They have managed to make the most of a very volatile and difficult market environment. Cambodia’s highly dollarized economy got whipsawed more than its peers as the most aggressive US Federal Reserve tightening cycle in three decades slammed emerging markets.
Cambodia also suffered greater Covid-19 fallout than most southeast Asia nations. The pandemic, Rais explains, “exacerbated Cambodia’s existing challenges in its economy by diverting the country’s already limited resources” amid worsening domestic demand and consumer confidence. Even so, Credit Suisse pulled off several important transactions, such as the $70 million tender offer for NagaCorp’s outstanding bonds.
The transaction was Cambodia’s first in the international debt capital markets in the post-Covid era. It also marked the first-ever tender offer for international bonds in Cambodia.
Credit Suisse won a sole mandate from Cambodia’s only international bond issuer. It suggests that the local market trusts the bank’s capability to deliver bespoke solutions and attract capital to the country. Notably, Credit Suisse is the only international bank on all NagaCorp’s dollar-denominated international bond transactions to date.
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