World's most attractive employers

Google is the "world's most attractive employer" based on a survey of 130,000 career seekers with an education in business or engineering, according to Universum, a consulting firm that focuses on employer branding. Google retained its position for the second consecutive year, while rival Microsoft was rated the 7th most attractive employer.

In the overall business ranking, Google is seeing a challenge from the "Big Four" auditing firms -- KPMG, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte -- who rounded out the top five.

The sixth-most attractive business to work for is Procter & Gamble. After Microsoft in 7th place, Coca-Cola, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs round out the top 10.

The rankings were compiled from a survey of "nearly 130,000 students at top academic institutions," who "chose their ideal companies to work for." The survey was first conducted in 2009.

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Sky taxi

SriLankan Air Taxi takes to the skies again

SriLankan Airlines is set to re-launch its domestic floatplane service – SriLankan Air Taxi – starting this December in time for the winter tourist season, a statement by the airline said.

SriLankan’s Head of Worldwide Sales Mohamed Fazeel said: “We are delighted to announce that we will shortly be adding a new dimension to domestic travel, enabling all types of travelers to reach most parts of the island within 40 minutes. International visitors arriving in Sri Lanka can go straight on to their destinations with convenient connections.”

The National Carrier is planning to acquire two Twin Otter aircraft for the operation, each with a capacity of up to 15 passengers. These twin-engined aircraft are currently being sourced.

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Bond Success

Sri Lanka extends yield curve with $1 billion issue

Sri Lanka comes to market with its largest and longest-dated sovereign ever, achieving the objective of extending its yield curve to 10 years.

The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka has sold $1 billion of fixed-rate senior unsecured 10-year bonds -- the largest and longest-dated sovereign from the South Asian island nation ever. The notes pay a 6.25% coupon and were re-offered at par for the same amount of yield. 

On a spreads basis that translated into 373.1bp over 10-year Treasuries.





The market has seen credit spreads tighten and yields rally recently and as a result, demand for emerging market paper and longer-dated notes has picked up. Sri Lanka's new credit took advantage of both those trends.





A single-B credit doesn’t appeal to everybody, but it is included in the emerging market bond index, which helps and [hence it] appeals to emerging market-based funds globally," said a banker, noting that such funds were a key target as the country went on the road to meet up with key investors.





Sri Lanka was on the road throughout the course of last week, speaking with investors and selling a story not only of an emerging market sovereign credit, but of improved fundamentals surrounding the economy that led to a ratings upgrade by Standard and Poor’s earlier this month.





Following that upgrade, the new 2020 bonds received a B+ rating from both S&P and Fitch.





Based on the strong reception received from investors, the borrower went straight to the market with a yield guidance of 6.5%. The guidance was left unchanged throughout Hong Kong trading day on Monday, and by midday New York time, after US accounts had had a chance to look at the trade, the lead managers confirmed a final guidance of 6.25% to 6.375%. By then, they had already secured an order book of over $3 billion.





By the time the order books closed, the demand totalled $6.5 billion from 310 accounts. Incidentally, this equalled the size of the order book for Sri Lanka's $500 million 2015 sovereign issue last year, which was used as the most comparable benchmark for this deal.





During the Hong Kong trading session yesterday the bonds reached a high of 101.00 on a cash price basis. By the end of the day they had fallen slightly to 100.75 for a yield of 6.15%.





“At 10bp tighter (on a yield basis) this is a very solid performance without leaving too much value on the table for investors,” said one banker familiar with the deal.





The notes were issued under the 144A/Reg-S format and attracted strong interest from US-based accounts, which took 52.5% of the bonds.





“It was an asset that suited investor preferences in the US extremely well,” said one source. “Leading into the trade, there was a strong bid for 10-year assets in the US,” he added.





Europe bought a quarter of the notes offered and Asia took the remaining 22.5%. 

There were mixed reactions to the allocation with one source commenting that some accounts in Asia were asking why it was heavily skewed towards US accounts.





What it came down to, explained another source, was that the US was able to provide good quality orders, particularly through asset and fund managers.





Indeed, the bonds saw a strong bid from real money accounts, and fund managers and asset managers received 85% of the bonds, while the remainder was evenly distributed between pension and insurance funds, private banks and commercial banks.





Bank of America Merrill Lynch, HSBC and the Royal Bank of Scotland were joint lead managers for the offering.

(FinanceAsia)

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Organic Growth

Bharti enters mobile handset market

Bharti Airtel India today announced that they
will enter the lucrative mobile handset manufacturing business via its
subsidiary Beetel Teletech Limited.

According to Indian media reports,
Bharti is planning to serve the lower end with cheap mobile phones in the range
of Indian rupees. 1,750-7,000.

Making an announcement,
Beetel Teletech Limited (a Bharti Group firm) Executive Director and CEO Vinod
Sawhny said, “The market is huge and
there is a room for Indian players...Phones in the price range of Rs. 2,000-6,000
are witnessing 30 per cent growth and we plan to offer a good combination of
feature-rich phones at affordable prices.”

On the market,
which has a mix of leading global players like Nokia,
Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola
and home-grown companies like Micromax,
Karbonn and others, he said the
company was a long-term player and has set an ambitious target of being among the
top five players in the next three years.

Bharti Airtel through its subsidiary Bharti Airtel Sri Lanka
started its operations in Sri
Lanka in January 2009.

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Indian Bank to open branch in Jaffna

Indian Bank to open branch in Jaffna

Public sector lender, Indian Bank wishes
to expand its overseas reach. The Chennai based bank is all set to open a full
fledged branch in Jaffna,
which is the capital of the northern province
of Sri Lanka.

This would be the second branch of the bank in the country.
It already has a branch in Colombo.

After SriLanka,
the bank is targeting Jakarta in Indonesia. The
branch is Jakarta
is expected to be the representative office.

“We have got all necessary clearances from different departments
of the Indian government including the finance ministry’s go-ahead to RBI. We
are expecting to get the licence within a fortnight’s time. In such an
eventuality, we are hopeful of
setting up a branch there by November,”
TM Bhasin, chairman & managing
director of Indian Bank, said.

While talking about the idea behind opening a branch in Jaffna, Bhasin
said, “There are a lot of
opportunities coming in Jaffna.
About Rs 1,000 crore has been
earmarked for housing development in Jaffna
— mostly for rehabilitation of the Indians. Besides,
there are a lot of opportunities for entrepreneurship development”.

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ASEAN+3 Forum Discusses Harmonizing Asia's Bond Markets

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - The ASEAN+3 Bond Market Forum
(ABMF) met for the first time today in Tokyo, Japan
to discuss how best to harmonize regulations and market practices in Asia’s local currency bond transactions.

The ABMF is largely made up of financial experts from the 10
countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), plus the People’s Republic of China,
Japan and the Republic of Korea. It aims to establish regional
market standards and common practices to make cross-border bond investment and
settlement both smoother and cheaper.

The local currency bond markets in emerging East
Asia have grown steadily in recent years,
with $4.8 trillion in bonds outstanding at the end of June 2010. However, cross-border transaction costs in the region are
high at an estimated three times more than in developed markets.

Common trading standards would make it faster and cheaper for
investors from across the region to dip in and out of their neighboring
markets. A wider variety and larger number of investors in Asia’s
bonds would also make the markets more efficient and thus a better place for
borrowers to raise funds.

“The forum is a big step towards institutionalizing regional
cooperation and should help integrate Asia’s
bond markets,” said Noritaka
Akamatsu, Deputy Head of the Asian
Development Bank’s (ADB) Office of Regional Economic Integration. “Ultimately, an integrated Asian bond market would benefit
issuers and investors not only in Asia but also
in the rest of the world.”

As a first step, the
ABMF will create two sub-forums. One will collate and compare regulations and
market practices in the region,
while the second will look to harmonize transaction procedures and bond
messaging formats with a view to cutting the cost of cross-border deals.

The forum was set up on the recommendation of a Group of Experts
consisting of leading public and private sector institutions, including national central securities depositories
from ASEAN+3 countries,
international central securities depositories,
global and regional custodians, and
the ADB. It was endorsed by finance ministers of ASEAN+3 when they met in Tashkent,
Uzbekistan in
May.

The Group of Experts and the ABMF are part of ASEAN+3’s Asian Bond
Markets Initiative (ABMI) aimed at fostering cross-border bond transactions.
The ABMI was set up by the ASEAN+3 Finance Ministers in 2003 to develop local
currency bond markets and to channel Asian savings into the region.

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Update on Price band

As at yesterday, a 10% price band is presently applicable for two listed securities, Vallibel Finance (From Sep 23 to Oct 13) and Lake House Printers and Publishers PLC (from Sep 24 to Oct 14), a CSE filing made yesterday  stated.

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