Record Australian Share Sales Have Been Very Good for Goldman

(Bloomberg) -- A record month for stock offerings by Australian firms has been good business for the likes of Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Macquarie Group Ltd, and JPMorgan Chase & Co., which have taken almost two thirds of the league table between them.

Australian firms raised a record $7.7 billion through additional share sales in April as they rushed to shore up balance sheets damaged by the coronavirus lockdown and take advantage of relaxed rules around capital raising.

The flurry of issuance has pushed Goldman Sachs up eight spots to the top in the Bloomberg League Table for Australia equity offerings from last year, with Macquarie and JPMorgan behind it. The two U.S. banks have worked on the three largest stock offerings in Australia this year, such as QBE Insurance Group Ltd.’s $770 million placement. Goldman also advised on National Australia Bank’s $1.94 billion capital raise, which is the largest placement year-to-date, while JPMorgan worked on Ramsay Health Care Ltd.’s $758 million additional offering.

READ MORE: Australian Companies Raise Record Amount of Cash in Stock Offers

Goldman has displaced UBS Group AG from the top spot it has commanded for Australian equity offerings for the past five years, although with over half the year still to go, the rankings can still change. While UBS has worked on more deals than Goldman this year -- 11 as opposed to the Wall Street bank’s 10 -- the deal sizes gave Goldman the ranking boost.

JPMorgan worked on 11 deals this year, Bloomberg League Tables show, and commands a 21% share of the table while Goldman has almost 23%. However in April it was Macquarie Group Ltd. that dominated Australia’s share sales thanks to the sheer number of deals it worked on. NAB’s huge institutional placement was the only deal above $200 million that the Australian bank advised on in April, the other nine all raising less than that.

UPCOMING LISTINGS:

• Central China New Life Ltd.
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• Kingsoft Cloud Holdings Ltd.
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• Peijia Medical Technology Co.
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• Kintor Pharmaceutical Ltd.
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• Ebang International Holdings Inc.
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More ECM situations we are following:

• Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. is planning an A-share listing in mainland China that could provide billions of dollars to the Chinese chipmaker that Beijing is betting could one day go up against heavyweights Intel Corp. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co
• Companies in Asia have announced or priced a total of $13.3 billion in additional offerings and rights issues of at least $5 million since April 23, according to data compiled by Bloomberg

See also:

• Asia ECM Weekly Agenda
• IPO data
• U.S. ECM Watch
• EU ECM Watch
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