Jumbo new-share placements by BYD and Xiaomi in March – Asia Pacific’s two largest equity capital market deals in 1Q25 – helped send Goldman Sachs to the top spot among the region’s ECM banks in the three months ended 31 March, according to Dealogic data.

Goldman Sachs helped manage USD 6.81bn worth of ECM offerings on an apportioned basis in 1Q25. That was more than 3x the USD 2.1bn the bank arranged in the previous quarter when it was the region’s No. 8 on the ECM league table, or over 2x the year earlier’s USD 2.92bn when it was Asia Pacific’s third busiest ECM arranger.

JPMorgan ranked No.2 regionally in 1Q25, overseeing USD 4.8bn worth of ECM offerings. The bank was the region’s third busiest ECM house in the prior quarter, when it was involved in USD 3.5bn worth of deals. Its latest quarterly performance also improved from 1Q24, when it came in No. 5 by helping print USD 2.05bn worth of deals, as shown by Dealogic.

Morgan Stanley, Asia Pacific’s top ECM bank in the entire 2024, dropped to the third spot in 1Q25, helping generate USD 3.42bn worth of volume from ECM deals. The bank topped the region in 4Q24 when it helped price USD 5.3bn worth of ECM offerings, and was the region’s first runner up in 1Q24, when it minted USD 3.3bn worth of papers, Dealogic show.

By asset class, both follow-ons and convertible bonds grew in 1Q25 from 4Q24, but blocks and placements market ultimately dictated the top three ECM banks’ rankings due to its sheer size.

In 1Q24, the region raised USD 31.08bn from the follow-on market (up from 4Q24’s USD 29.09bn), way bigger than the equity-linked market’s USD 6.7bn (improving from the previous quarter’s USD 5.3bn) or the initial public offering market’s USD 9.97bn (shrinking from USD 22.36bn in 4Q24).

The three largest follow-on banks – Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and CICC – were the exact three arrangers behind Xiaomi’s placement.

While BYD’s deal was a tad larger, it was run by four banks, diluting the apportioned value for each bank.

Both Goldman Sach and JPMorgan were also involved in the region’s third largest follow-on, a USD 4.02bn secondary offering of shares of Japan Post Bank by Japan Post Holdings, according to Dealogic data.

In the convertible bond market, Morgan Stanley rose three spots from the previous quarter to the top position in 1Q25, managing USD 1.14bn worth of papers. Goldman Sachs followed immediately by pricing USD 930m in deals, while HSBC was the region’s third busiest equity-linked bonds bank, handling USD 850m worth of papers.

The region’s IPO market plunged to just over USD 10bn of volumes in 1Q25 from USD 22.36bn in 4Q24, due mainly to weakness in India and stresses over global trade tensions.

It is almost impossible to come up with a theme for 1Q25 by simply looking at the list of the top 10 IPO banks.

Morgan Stanley again topped the segment, pricing USD 692.7m worth of maiden share offerings, followed by Japan’s Nomura, which managed USD 567m of deals, and then it was India’s Axis, which arranged USD 524.1m worth of such deals, Dealogic data show.

Please find below the region’s top 10 ECM transactions in 1Q25.

Until India rises back, and secondary listings in Hong Kong of China-listed firms gain steam, it would be hard for the IPO market to swap the league table much.

For now, as India remains subdued, all eyes are on a jumbo Hong Kong listing of CATL, the world’s largest electric-vehicle batteries maker. Should the deal go well, it would open the floodgates for many such A-H listing candidates, said a sector banker.