Macquarie Bank expands Asia bond operation MACQUARIE Group is expanding its bond and loan arranging business in Asia, as sales of so-called "dim sum" notes surge and high-yielding clients demand access to debt investors. The bank will add to its existing team of 10, which is split between Hong Kong and Singapore, as transactions grow, according to Stephen Panizza, who has expanded his Asia-focused debt advisory role to head the new unit. "Our clients in Asia are mid-market, high-growth businesses that constantly need capital," Singapore-based Mr Panizza said. As liquidity returned to the market after the credit crisis, we came to the conclusion we needed to build out a debt capital markets capability to deliver to our clients access to a wider array of capital sources. Macquarie ranks 139th as an arranger of bond sales in Asia outside of Japan this year, its two transactions giving it a 0.1 per cent market share, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It's at No 39 for equity offerings in the region, compared with No 5 in Australia and New Zealand, the data shows. Yuan-denominated bond sales in Hong Kong may reach 200 billion yuan ($29.65bn) this year, according to Mizuho Securities Asia, as Chinese companies seek to circumvent lending curbs on the mainland. Macquarie helped Powerlong Real Estate Holdings sell 750 million yuan in three-year, 11.5 per cent notes in March. "Clearly, it would be a huge challenge to break the established order, but that's not our objective," Mr Panizza said. Powerlong is a good example. We invested pre-IPO, we did the IPO, then, when they wanted to do a debt issue, naturally we were there to help. The Chinese developer sold shares in an initial public offering in October 2009 that was managed by Goldman Sachs, ICBC International Securities and Macquarie Capital Securities. Most of the 10 people in the bond and loan unit were already working at the bank prior to the team's official start date of April 1, Mr Panizza said. David Pong, who was previously at ANZ, was hired to focus on debt origination last month. "The pool of liquidity that is most interesting to us in Asia is the dim sum market," Mr Panizza said. This is going to be a very deep, very liquid market at some point in the future. The expansion of Macquarie's fixed-income, currencies and commodities business in Asia over the past 12 months was also an "enabling factor." "Part of their platform is credit sales and trading," he said. That gave us the distribution capability we didn't have previously. The Asia-Pacific region accounted for 8 per cent of the bank's revenue for the year to March 31, versus 12 per cent in 2010. Macquarie makes most of its money from its funds management business, according to the bank's website.