This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on October 27, 2017

KUALA LUMPUR: CIMB Investment Bank Bhd was named top lead manager in terms of number of programmes and their corresponding value arranged in 2016 at Malaysian Rating Corp Bhd’s (MARC) Lead Managers League Table awards ceremony on Wednesday.

MARC chief executive officer Mohd Razlan Mohamed said the debt capital market has rebounded after a challenging environment in 2016.

“Effective capital markets will remain crucial to the efficient allocation of credit and investment going forward. Against this backdrop, we see growing demand for innovative and well-structured debt instruments,” he said in a statement yesterday.

Presented annually, MARC’s Lead Managers League Table awards recognise the contributions of lead arrangers and issuers to the development of the domestic debt and sukuk capital markets.

The rating agency introduced a special award this year called Project Finance Sukuk of the Year 2016, which went to Lebuhraya Duke Fasa 3 Sdn Bhd. The sukuk issuance of RM3.64 billion to finance a greenfield toll-road project in the Klang Valley represented the largest domestic project financing sukuk in 2016.

It also launched CreditMapper, a web-based data analytical tool that allows users to perform credit assessments of corporates and financial institutions.

From its inception in 1996 to September 2017, MARC had rated 786 bonds and sukuk issues valued at RM515 billion.