Kuala Lumpur, 23 June 2021 – Maybank Investment Bank (Maybank IB) swept six top-tier honours at the 2021 FinanceAsia Country Awards and Alpha Southeast Asia (Alpha SEA) Best Financial Institution Awards announced this week, cementing its lead in Malaysian investment banking for the second straight year.
Awards tally caps pandemic-year rally
FinanceAsia handed Maybank IB the titles “Best Investment Bank”, “Best ECM House” and “Best DCM House” for Malaysia, while Alpha SEA crowned the same firm “Best Bond House”, “Best Equity House” and “Best Institutional Broker” in the country. The repeat wins in the overall “Best Investment Bank” and “Best Institutional Broker” categories mark consecutive annual victories; the DCM and bond-house prizes are now three-peat wins.
The shortlist of deals that impressed voters was dominated by transactions closed despite Covid-19 lockdowns and volatile capital markets. Maybank IB served as sole adviser and joint lead manager on Sime Darby Property’s RM 800 million ASEAN Sustainability SRI Sukuk Musharakah, the first Sukuk globally to combine a sustainability label with the Musharakah profit-sharing structure and the first ASEAN sustainability Sukuk issued by a property developer. The five-year RM 150 million tranche was fully subscribed within hours of launch in March.
Record IPO and global notes keep league tables busy
Three months later the bank returned as joint book-runner on the RM 1.5 billion initial public offering of MR D.I.Y. Group (M) Bhd, the largest Malaysian retail-sector IPO on record and the country’s biggest flotation since 2017. The offer was 3.4 times covered and priced at the top of the range, raising proceeds that the home-improvement chain is using to triple its store count across Southeast Asia.
Maybank IB was also the only ASEAN-based arranger invited onto Petronas’ two-part global medium-term note programme. The 2020 tranche totalled US$6 billion and included a 40-year tenor, the longest-dated bond ever issued by a Malaysian corporation. A second US$3 billion drawdown followed in April 2021, lifting the state oil firm’s overall programme ceiling to US$15 billion. Both transactions rank as the largest global bonds out of Southeast Asia in their respective years.
CEO credits client trust and sustainability focus
Fad’l Mohamed, chief executive of Maybank IB, said the bank’s pandemic strategy of staying “client-centred and solutions-driven” allowed teams to keep executing landmark mandates. “We are humbled to receive these accolades against this backdrop and would like to thank our clients for their trust in us. This will spur us on to do better, to continue to come up with innovative solutions that employ a sustainability-first approach,” he told reporters after the virtual award ceremony.
The Sime Darby Property Sukuk was certified by the UK-based Climate Bonds Initiative, adding to a growing pipeline of green and sustainability-linked deals that Maybank IB has structured since the central bank eased guidelines in 2020. According to Dealogic, the bank now leads Malaysian ringgit bond league tables with a 22% share of proceeds so far in 2021, up from 18% last year.
Broader recognition builds on domestic strength
Away from the twin award programmes, Maybank IB also collected “Malaysia’s Best Equity Adviser”, “Best Bond Adviser (Domestic)” and “Best Brokerage” at The Asset Triple A Country Awards held earlier in the quarter. Taken together, the five additional trophies lift the firm’s year-to-date award count to eleven, the most it has gathered in a single fiscal period since parent Maybank began disclosing segmental results in 2010.
Reports note that the haul arrives as regional competitors scale back proprietary risk and retreat to core markets. “Maybank IB’s ability to cross-sell Islamic, conventional and equity products under one roof is becoming a clear differentiator,” said Wong Mei Ling, who tracks Malaysian lenders for RHB Research. “They are essentially the local gatekeeper for global funds that want ASEAN exposure but need Shariah-compliant structures.”
The bank’s investment-banking fees rose 28% to RM 1.1 billion for the financial year ended March 2021, helping offset slower trading income across the group. Management has guided for double-digit growth again in FY22, banking on a pipeline that includes at least three more sustainability-labelled Sukuk and two IPOs from the healthcare and logistics sectors pending regulatory approval.
Investors will watch whether Maybank IB can defend its rankings once cross-border travel resumes and global banks regain physical access to Kuala Lumpur’s deal-making circuit. For now, the firm’s sweep of the region’s most closely watched banking prizes leaves it with both the trophies and the balance-sheet firepower to set the pace for Malaysian capital markets through the rest of 2021.
