According to a number of Singapore-based foreign and domestic law firms, the inflow of capital markets, M&A, energy, infrastructure and arbitration work from Indonesia, India and Vietnam to Singapore has boomed in the past year.
Freehills Singapore partner-in-charge John Dick said Indonesia has been hot on the radar with the coal and mining sector a big part of the work that has kept its Singapore office busy. “Indonesia’s very big on our radar. [Singapore] is a good place to be based, the banks are all here – we do a lot of the financing on the M&A side of things out of here to Jakarta,” he said.
According to Dick, India has invested heavily into Indonesia, a trend that has intensified in the past six months, with the biggest M&A deals in Indonesia linked to Indian companies. “We have witnessed approximately 30-40 Indian companies with M&A interests in Indonesia,” he said.
Arbitration lawyers, too, are receiving instructions from Indonesia. Rajah & Tann arbitration partner Chong Yee Leong, for example, says Indonesia is one of the most frequent users of Singapore as a seat of arbitration.
On the Indian front, Jones Day capital markets and banking partners Manoj Bhargava and Sushma Jobanputra have seen exponential growth in deal flow. Their firm’s capital markets team has completed at least 20 Indian transactions year to date, including advising Adani Enterprises in its US$850m placement of equity shares (the largest private placement to be undertaken in India in 2010).
According to Bhargava, an increasing cross-border trend of Indian and Indonesian clients wanting to dual list has emerged. In addition, more Indian companies are seeking to list on the SGX to gain broader access to liquidity in the region, and this is keeping Singapore-based capital markets lawyers extremely busy.
Jones Day is looking to close four Indian capital markets deals linked to thermal and hydroelectric power projects in the next six months.
Vietnam, too, seems to be becoming ever more prominent in firms’ growth plans for the region. Jobanputra said Vietnam is another very active market in the M&A space, and Dick at Freehills notes that M&A is a real growth practice in Singapore with increasing instructions coming from Vietnam. ALB
Related stories: