A US$50m convertible bond issue in April by Panva Gas, China's largest supplier of liquefied petroleum gas and piped gas, was sold out in one-and-a-half days. The bonds are listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange. The sole bookrunner and lead manager for the issue was Morgan Stanley.
The bulk of the proceeds of the sale will be used to fund expansion in the piped gas business, primarily by acquiring networks from state-owned enterprises. Xinhua joins global news alliance Xinhua Financial Network (XFN) has joined with CBS MarketWatch.com and AFX News in Europe to form the World Business News Alliance, South China Morning Postsaid. The alliance aims to provide an 'affordable real-time global financial news feed for institutional clients' through sharing operations, knowledge and technology. Its members employ 5,000 journalists and they are expected to produce 10,000 news items a day in North America, Europe and Asia.
In January this year XFN, which is partly owned by the government-controlled Xinhua News Agency, bought AFX Asia from AFX News, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Agence France Presse.