Malaysia Equity House

IFR Asia Awards 2013
3 min read
Asia
S Anuradha

Maybank managed the most significant initial public offerings and placements from Malaysia in 2013, enabling issuers to raise capital and investors to make money.

The Malaysian equity market was less active, compared with the blockbuster 2012, but Maybank increased its market share with roles on the biggest share issuances from the country.

Winning new customers and repeat business from old clients helped Maybank take the lead. It played major roles in the three biggest IPOs of Malaysia in 2013 – the M$2.7bn (US$844m) float of UMW Oil & Gas, the M$2.2bn float of Westports Holdings and the M$988m float of Air Asia X.

The UMW and Westports IPOs were proof of Maybank’s ability to deliver cornerstone investments. In both the IPOs, cornerstone investors were critical to their success, accounting for almost the entire institutional portions and Maybank played a key role in securing many of the buyers.

The UMW and Westports IPOs were blockbusters. UMW’s institutional book was 55x covered and the retail portion 10.7x covered, while Westports’ institutional offer was 40x oversubscribed and the retail offer 5.3x oversubscribed. Maybank was the only domestic bank to win a joint global co-ordinator role on the Westports listing, and was the principal adviser.

Maybank also showed the strength of its retail network. Air Asia X’s was the first Malaysia IPO where the retail tranche accounted for around a third of the total offering size. As a sweetener, retail investors were rewarded with free return air tickets every year for the first three years after the IPO, depending on the stock held.

Clients also continued to trust Maybank’s advice, as evident in the repeat businesses from clients in three different industries: SapuraKencana, Sunway REIT and SP Setia.

SapuraKencana’s M$1.6bn placement was the second-largest on record in Malaysia’s oil-and-gas sector, while and SP Setia’s M$943m placement was the second largest from a Malaysian REIT.

As sole bookrunner for SP Setia’s deal, Maybank secured eight anchor investors ahead of the launch of the placement. In SapuraKencana placement, anchor investors covered 91% of it. The bank’s ability to lock in demand ahead of the placement was key to giving a high degree of certainty to these transactions.

Sunway REIT’s M$327m placement was the issuer’s first equity raising since its listing on Bursa Malaysia in 2010 in another Maybank deal.

Maybank also worked on an IPO for a special-purpose acquisition company, a segment that is slowly picking up pace in Malaysia. It was one of the banks on Cliq Energy’s US$117m IPO.

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