Morgan Stanley remained well ahead of peers in Asia Pacific equity capital market dealmaking across all three major asset classes in the quarter ended September.

In the three months to 30 September, the bulge bracket bank helped manage USD 8.9bn worth of deals, versus second-place Citi’s USD 5.24bn, while JPMorgan followed with USD 4.8bn in apportioned credits, based on Dealogic data.

Morgan Stanley has been the leading ECM bank in APAC for two consecutive quarters, while Citi jumped three spots and JPMorgan fell one.

This analysis categorises deals by the issuer’s nationality rather than the exchange nationality, though it puts a company’s secondary listing in the follow-on bucket rather than under initial public offerings.

Hong Kong/China and artificial intelligence deals were the driving themes behind Asia Pacific’s 3Q25 ECM activity, which totalled a hefty USD 99.6bn, up 42% on the second quarter and 55% year-on-year, as reported by this news service previously. The 3Q25 total was the best quarterly reading since 4Q21’s USD 164.9bn.

For the nine months ended 30 September, Morgan Stanley — which has been a stalwart top three bank every quarter since 2024 — remained the most active ECM bank in APAC, helping bring USD 20.68bn worth of offerings to the market, though that’s down a tad from the USD 21bn of deals it worked on in the same 2024 period.

JPMorgan advanced one spot to rank second, helping oversee USD 16.86bn worth of deals, up from USD 14.21bn in the same period last year.

Goldman Sachs also rose a spot to third place for the nine-month period, helping underwrite USD 15.93bn worth of deals, up from USD 13.07bn a year earlier, when it ranked fourth.

IPOs, Follow-ons, Equity-linked Bonds 

For APAC IPOs, Morgan Stanley was the only global investment bank in the top three, running an apportioned USD 825.2m worth of sales in the third quarter (almost double the USD 439.3m in 3Q24). Two Chinese banks followed: CITIC Securities took the second spot with USD 783.3m worth of transactions (versus USD 192.3m last year), while GF Securities was close behind, helping run USD 736m of deals (a surge from a negligible USD 67.68m recorded the same period last year.)

The three banks were among the arrangers for Zijin Gold International’s HKD 24.98bn (USD 3.2bn) IPO in Hong Kong in September.

Morgan Stanley also led in the follow-on space by managing USD 6.1bn worth of offerings (up from USD 5.27bn last year). JPMorgan followed, though handling a much smaller USD 3.4bn (down from USD 5.36bn last year) worth of transactions, while Citi took the third spot by running USD 2.95bn of share sales for corporates or shareholders (little changed from USD 2.77bn last year).

Morgan Stanley and Cantor Fitzgerald jointly ran Japanese fintech Metaplanet‘s USD 1.4bn share offering in September. Citi managed Hanwha Impact Partners’ sale of a 4.27% stake in Hanwha Ocean for USD 1bn in September, while JPMorgan worked alongside Jefferies on Bharti Airtel’s USD 1.28bn block in August.

It was a similar story in the equity-linked bond market, where Morgan Stanley went full steam ahead. The bank helped manage USD 2bn worth of deals (down from USD 2.6bn last year), while Citi was narrowly behind by part-running the books for USD 1.97bn worth of offerings (over 10x the USD 183.3m in 3Q24). UBS, meanwhile, gained one spot to place third, overseeing USD 1.66bn worth of equity-linked deals (versus USD 1.43bn last year).

The three were among the arrangers for Alibaba Group’s USD 3.168bn convertible bond printed in September, which was also this year’s largest equity-linked sale out of the region.