As Asia teems with infrastructure activity, western banks are quietly disappearing from the market. In their place regional banks have emerged as the dominant players, with Chinese lenders now the driving force.
The whittling away of European and US names from the region’s infrastructure financing line-up has been a long time coming. The crises of 1997 and 2008 helped clear out weaker players.
But more recently, a flood of new projects and liquidity in local markets have made regional banks difficult to beat on the cost of financing. With appetite for currency and sovereign risk low among global banks, lenders such as China Development Bank and Korea Development Bank have quickly stepped up, cheque in hand.