O’Melveny & Myers LLP represented Asia Cement (China) Holdings Corporation on its offering of RMB 586 million (US$92 million) principal amount of 2.95 percent notes due in 2014. The offering was made to offshore institutional investors in Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia.
Asia Cement (China) will use the proceeds of the offering for working capital. HSBC, BNP Paribas, and Mizuho Securities Asia acted as joint lead managers of the offering. The transaction was led by senior counsel Andrew Hutton in Singapore and partner Neil Campbell in Hong Kong. Hong Kong partner Gordon Ng represented Asia Cement (China) in its listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2008 and provided Hong Kong-listing-related advice for this transaction.
“The Hong Kong dim sum offshore RMB bond market continues to experience strong growth despite recent slowdowns in other global debt and equity markets,” said Neil Campbell. “The Firm is tapping into its global platform to advise clients interested in this type of offering, including foreign multinational corporations and PRC companies.”
The offering for Asia Cement (China) is the latest milestone for O’Melveny’s Debt Capital Markets Practice in Asia, following August’s offshore RMB bond offering by China Eastern Airlines and other recent synthetic RMB and high yield bond transactions by China and Indonesian issuers.
Outstanding volume of offshore RMB bonds reached RMB 135 billion (US$21 billion) at the end of July 2011 and is expected to reach the RMB 200 billion (US$31 billion) mark by the end of 2011, according to a recent IFR Asia report. In addition, recent PRC government policy statements have encouraged the offshore RMB bond market further.
If you would like to speak with Neil Campbell or Andrew Hutton about this transaction or the dim sum bond trend, please contact Julie Fei, Sonja Steptoe, or Rebecca Dickson at the numbers listed above.
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