Bank of China is embarking on the world's biggest initial public offering in six years just as Asian markets dip, but it can count on one increasingly reliable source of demand for its deal: Japan.
Cash-rich and confident Japanese investors aiming to diversify are growing as a source of capital for companies in China, South Korea and India - a trend expected to continue given Japan has roughly $8 trillion in household savings and its economy is recovering steadily.
"We are seeing growing participation across classes of Japanese investors in Asian debt and equity securities," said John Keith, Hong Kong-based head of debt capital markets for Asia-Pacific at top Japanese brokerage Nomura Holdings Inc, a key beneficiary of the trend.
Greater participation by the Japanese may be all the more welcome in view of the slide in stock markets across the region in the last couple of weeks, just as Bank of China gets ready for its June 1 Hong Kong market debut.
The bank, which is looking to raise US $9.8 billion, has tapped Daiwa Securities to handle the Japanese portion of its share sale through a vehicle known as a public offering without listing, or POWL.
Other multibillion-dollar stock sales planned this year from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Merchants Bank and Australian telephone firm Telstra Corp are also expected to tap Japan's deep pool of retail investors.
"The fact that we're having a good run in the Nikkei, the fact that interest rates have gone up but not too dramatically, the fact that the currency has been reasonably buoyant - all of those combine together to give people confidence to continue to diversify portfolios," Keith said.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 Index is up 45 percent over the last 52 weeks despite slumping in the past month.
Meanwhile, the Tokyo bourse, largely shunned by overseas firms in recent years, has said it aims to attract as many as 10 listings from Chinese companies. Tokyo may also be one of several venues for the huge initial public offering planned for later this year from Russian state oil giant Rosneft.
Recent deals reflect Japan's appetite for overseas exposure - especially to big, blue chip companies.
January's $3.5 billion IPO by top South Korean retailer Lotte Shopping Co saw 20 percent of its shares allocated to Japanese investors - the same amount sold domestically.
Japanese investors also bought roughly one-quarter each in American depositary share (ADS) issues last year from India's ICICI Bank Ltd and Infosys Technologies.
In a rare overseas listing in Tokyo, South Korean steel giant POSCO Co Ltd sold $691 million worth of depositary receipts in a Japanese share offering late last year.
And in a first-of-its-kind deal last year, German state bank KfW sold to Japanese investors a 1.1 billion euro bond exchangeable into shares of Deutsche Post.
Where Japanese demand for overseas stock deals has often been tapped through private placements to up to 49 institutional investors, big Asian issuers nowadays access Japan and its enthusiastic retail investors through POWLs.
"POWLs attract a huge amount of pretty much price-insensitive demand at a fairly early stage of the deal, which provides comfort," said John Sturmey, managing director in equity capital markets at UBS in Hong Kong.
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