Singapore bond bankers vie for deals as OCBC closes gap on DBS

[SINGAPORE] Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp is closing the gap on top-ranked Singapore dollar bond arranger DBS Group Holdings Ltd, trailing by the narrowest margin on record last quarter.

OCBC helped issue S$1.56 billion of offerings at home in the three months to March 31, boosting its market share to 32.4 per cent, more than triple a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

DBS worked on S$1.62 billion of deals for a 33.6 percent market share. OCBC was the sole manager on two issues for Singapore Telecommunications Ltd this year while DBS was on all three of its previous local-currency deals.

Singapore's two largest lenders are vying for a smaller pool of profits, which has pushed them to expand overseas and into investment banking. New rules that require banks to reduce risky holdings, coupled with deposit rates less than 0.5 per cent in the island nation, have prompted companies to sell more bonds in the local currency in the past five years than in the previous decade.