On February 26th, 2021, International Financing Review (IFR) published the list of laureates of its IFR Asia Awards of 2020. CICC wins Asian Bank and China Equity House of the Year. The awards are substantial endorsements of CICC’s outstanding innovations, client-focused philosophy, and leading investment banking performance in markets at home and abroad.

This is CICC’s inaugural Asian Bank of the Year title, making it the first Chinese investment bank to claim the substantial Asian and Country awards at the same time. 

Additionally, Alibaba Group’s Hong Kong secondary listing, sponsored by CICC, won Equity Issue of the Year (Asia); and AIIB’s Rmb3bn 2.4% Panda bond issuance, in which CICC acted as the joint lead underwriter, was honored the Renminbi Bond of the Year (China).

Below is a list of awards that we have obtained this year:

IFR Asia commented in its report that China International Capital Corp added to its reputation as China’s premier investment bank in 2020, playing a key part in introducing new capital raising concepts to the domestic market and narrowing the gap between onshore and offshore markets. 

（The following is an excerpt from the IFR article "Asian Bank of the year, China equity house: CICC", by Thomas Blott）

CICC’s international expertise and its work cultivating relationships with innovative and private sector companies paid dividends in a year when the Covid-19 crisis accelerated the transformation of China’s capital markets.

CICC had an outstanding year by any measure. It outmuscled the likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley in terms of overall investment banking fees in Asia, moving up four places to third in IFR Asia’s review period from November 16 2019 to December 31 2020.

Its stellar performance was driven by a strong showing in ECM, where it raised US$26.26bn from 133 deals during the review period, double its total for the previous IFR awards period.

Its success last year was no accident. China’s oldest investment bank has worked hard to pivot its own focus towards private sector companies embodying the country’s new economy.

“It’s easy to say we were fortunate last year but we made a solid bet several years ago that a lot of the growth, not just in Asia but globally, would come from a growing number of new economy companies in China and that strategy is beginning to bear fruit,” said Cong Hui, head of capital markets.

CICC began life as a Sino-foreign joint venture in 1995 with Morgan Stanley and China Construction Bank its biggest shareholders. Its early successes included the US$4.2bn landmark overseas listing of China Mobile in 1997 and US$2.9bn PetroChina IPO in 2000, followed by mega-floats from Chinese state banks. 

As the number of milestone public-sector deals dried up, CICC reinvented itself as a leading adviser to new economy champion.

Back in 2015, it set up a growth investment banking team to deepen its coverage of early-stage, new economy companies. It has also skilled up in key sectors: it is one of the few investment banks with a dedicated semiconductor team.

The acquisition of China Investment Securities, completed in 2017, has also added to its market penetration. CISC’s sprawling retail network gave the firm offices in many second-tier and third-tier cities, away from its earlier heavy concentration in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

“This has definitely been a multi-year effort to try to grow our ties with new economy companies,” said Barry Chan, head of investment banking for Hong Kong. “We formed the growth investment banking team many years ago.”

CICC’s leading role in supporting China’s new economy was best illustrated last year by its track record on the Star Board. As sponsor of several landmark deals, it helped introduce reforms that have made the exchange a viable alternative for technology companies, allowing a broader range of issuers to access capital and reducing long regulatory delays.

“One of the things that distinguishes CICC from a lot of the other Chinese securities firms is our strong international presence,” said Xu Jia, head of international investment banking. “A lot of the innovations we saw last year in the Star Market we have experienced in overseas markets, so we are able to work closely with the issuers on these landmark transactions.”

Outside of China, CICC also had a better year than most of its rivals as the groundwork laid in previous years paid off. CICC led its peers in the Hong Kong equity market and advised on eight out of the 10 secondary listings during IFR’s review period. Notably as co-sponsor of Alibaba Group Holding’s HK$101bn debut at the end of 2019；It was also sponsor on Nongfu Spring’s hugely popular HK$9.5bn IPO in September, the stellar trading debut of the shares, which popped 54%, was one of the drivers of the red-hot Hong Kong IPO market in the last few months of 2020.

CICC was also a pioneer in the issuance of global depositary receipts, advising on all three listings last year under the Shanghai-London Stock Connect trading link, In debt capital markets, CICC helped pioneer new concepts, including Bank of Communications’ US$2.8bn Additional Tier 1 capital raising, the first offshore issue by a Chinese bank structured as a perpetual bond, and the US dollar tranche of Bank of China’s US$942m-equivalent dual-currency blue bonds, Asia’s first public offering of a sustainability instrument with a focus on ocean health.