OREANDA-NEWS. March 12, 2014. Bank of China Singapore branch (BOC) issued Renmimbi (RMB) 3 billion ‘Lion City’ bonds, the largest Chinese yuan bond issuance in Singapore. The bonds will be listed on the Singapore Exchange.

With strong support from local and international institutional investors, the issuance was 2.96 times oversubscribed. The geographical composition of investors shows 52% coming from Singapore, 25% from rest of Asia and 23% from Europe. It was priced at 3.30% for the two-year bonds, 4% for the five-year bonds. Bank of China, DBS Bank, OCBC Bank Singapore and Standard Chartered Bank are joint book runners, with the Agricultural Bank of China Singapore Branch being co-manager.

BOC Singapore General Manager Mr. Zhang Qingsong said: “Bank of China’s ‘Lion City’ issuance reflects the continued internationalisation of RMB as a leading currency and Singapore’s increasing maturity as an offshore renminbi centre.

“As China’s most international bank with the largest renminbi cross-border transactions business, this issuance demonstrates BOC’s continued support for Singapore’s rapid development as an offshore renminbi centre.”

This is BOC’s third RMB bond issuance within its USD10 billion Medium-Term Note programme (MTN) which was assigned ‘A’ by Fitch Ratings and ‘A1’ by Moody's Investors Service. BOC released its first 2 billion RMB “Formosa Bonds” in Taiwan in December 2013 and 2.5 billion RMB offshore bonds in London in January 2014.

Operating under a Qualifying Full Bank License (QFB), BOC Singapore branch provides a wide range of services including deposit and loan banking, commodity financing, wealth management and credit cards.

Bank of China launched the BOC Cross-border Renminbi Index (CRI) in September 2013. The Index reached a historic high of 228 points at the fourth quarter last year, showing that RMB internationalisation process continues to accelerate.