Features

While the dollar’s international supremacy is unchallenged for now, the wider landscape is shifting. Companies are raising more funding in renminbi and the currency’s use in international payments and settlements is growing.

Mongolia’s five big lenders have successfully completed their IPOs, doubling the size of the local stock market. But the challenge of attracting more foreign institutional investment remains.

Singapore’s big-three lenders – UOB, DBS and OCBC – have won Euromoney awards for best SME bank in Asia each year since 2016, two of them taking the global award as well. Why?

Southeast Asia’s capital markets are buzzing, making them hot favourites with global investors. But be warned: some big obstacles are expected in the months ahead, testing the ability of issuers and investment banks to get deals over the line.

Indonesia was recently re-ranked by the World Bank as an upper middle-income country, even though as many as 100 million Indonesians remain unbanked. Andi Taufan Garuda Putra tells Asiamoney how his Amartha microlending platform is bringing them into the financial system.

After years of easy Eurobond access and ramped-up Chinese lending, developing economies are now caught between rising interest rates and geopolitical tensions, making debt restructurings more numerous and more complicated. Despite some progress in inter-creditor talks, many debtor nations face an uncertain financial future.

For decades, transaction banking was a profitable but largely ignored corner of the banking industry. Then Covid happened. Today, bank chiefs see it as critical to everything they do. Given the challenges ahead – collaborating with fintechs and embedding ESG principles in global supply chains – the revolution under way in this business is unstoppable.

The abrupt departure of the US NGO fund from military-run Myanmar leaves a vacuum for microfinanciers.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s latest policy splash is the $8.8 billion Maharlika Investment Fund, a sovereign wealth vehicle that aims to boost growth and inward investment. But it has drawn criticism, even within Marcos’s family. Many highlight the cautionary tale of Malaysia’s 1MDB, and fret about the capacity for corruption and poor governance.