Hong Kong-listed Bank of East Asia BEA last night raised $500 million from the sale of hybrid tier-1 capital securities, marking the first ever sale of such securities by a Hong Kong bank.
It was also the first bank capital deal in Asia in more than 12 months and the size of the order book as well as the resilience of the orders even as global equity markets have tumbled and credit spreads widened over the past four days, showed that there is clearly pent-up demand in the region for these types of transactions.
According to sources, the total order book amounted to more than $5.3 billion, or just over 10 times the value of...