Sri Lanka has ambitious plans to develop its capital markets, the country’s finance minister told FinanceAsia on Thursday. This includes a handful of IPOs from state-owned companies and a bold idea to securitise billions of dollars of government debt.
The South Asian country is in the midst of a furious reform drive in its capital markets, considering ideas ranging from separate boards on its stock exchange for small- and medium-sized enterprises to the all-important introduction of a central counterparty system. But the government appears keenly aware that, in the capital markets, it is deals that count. It is now plotting a series of headline-grabbing transactions that will hit...