Pandemic lockdowns and volatile capital markets did not stop Maybank Investment Bank from closing deals that judges at two industry award programs found impossible to ignore. The result: six top-tier honours from FinanceAsia Country Awards and Alpha Southeast Asia Best Financial Institution Awards, both announced this week. The firm now holds consecutive annual wins for overall “Best Investment Bank” and “Best Institutional Broker” in Malaysia. Its debt capital markets and bond-house prizes have now landed three years running.
The stakes behind these trophies are concrete. Investment banking in Southeast Asia has been a brutal business during Covid-19. Issuers pulled floats. Bond markets seized up. Many houses sat idle. Maybank IB kept working.
Two transactions dominated the shortlist that impressed voters. In March, the bank served as sole adviser and joint lead manager on Sime Darby Property’s RM 800 million ASEAN Sustainability SRI Sukuk Musharakah. That instrument carries weight beyond its size. It is the first Sukuk globally to combine a sustainability label with the Musharakah profit-sharing structure. It is the first ASEAN sustainability Sukuk issued by a property developer. The five-year RM 150 million tranche sold out within hours of launch. Full subscription in hours, during a pandemic, in a niche product that had never existed before.
Three months later, Maybank IB acted as joint book-runner on the RM 1.5 billion initial public offering of MR D.I.Y. Group (M) Bhd. That is the largest Malaysian retail-sector IPO on record. It is the country’s biggest flotation since 2017. The offer was 3.4 times covered and priced at the top of the range. The home-improvement chain is using the proceeds to triple its store count across Southeast Asia. A retail IPO of that size, oversubscribed, at the top of the price range, in a pandemic year — that is what kept league tables busy when much of the region’s equity capital markets business had stalled.
What is at risk for Maybank IB is leadership in a market where margins are thin and competitors are hungry. The firm has now held the top investment bank title in Malaysia for two straight years. Losing that grip would mean lost mandate flow, weaker fee income, and a slide down the league tables that institutional investors and corporate treasurers watch. The three-peat in DCM and bond-house categories is equally consequential. Debt issuance has been the lifeline of Malaysian capital markets during the crisis. Companies that could not access equity markets turned to bonds. Maybank IB held its ground there.
The awards are retrospective. They cover work done during 2020 and early 2021, when the pandemic was at its worst in Malaysia. Lockdowns shut offices. Volatility spooked investors. Deals that closed did so because banks found ways to get them done remotely, with virtual roadshows and electronic book-building. The judges gave the trophies for execution under those conditions, not for normal times.
Maybank IB now faces the question of whether it can repeat the performance when markets reopen fully and competition from international houses intensifies. The 2022 award cycle will tell that story. For now, the firm has six trophies that say it handled the worst of the pandemic better than its peers.
