Record Australian Share Sales Have Been Very Good for Goldman

(Bloomberg) -- A record month for stock offerings by Australian firms has been good business for the likes of Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Macquarie Group Ltd, and JPMorgan Chase & Co., which have taken almost two thirds of the league table between them.

Australian firms raised a record $7.7 billion through additional share sales in April as they rushed to shore up balance sheets damaged by the coronavirus lockdown and take advantage of relaxed rules around capital raising.

The flurry of issuance has pushed Goldman Sachs up eight spots to the top in the Bloomberg League Table for Australia equity offerings from last year, with Macquarie and JPMorgan behind it. The two U.S. banks have worked on the three largest stock offerings in Australia this year, such as QBE Insurance Group Ltd.'s $770 million placement. Goldman also advised on National Australia Bank's $1.94 billion capital raise, which is the largest placement year-to-date, while JPMorgan worked on Ramsay Health Care Ltd.'s $758 million additional offering.

Goldman has displaced UBS Group AG from the top spot it has commanded for Australian equity offerings for the past five years, although with over half the year still to go, the rankings can still change. While UBS has worked on more deals than Goldman this year -- 11 as opposed to the Wall Street bank's 10 -- the deal sizes gave Goldman the ranking boost.

JPMorgan worked on 11 deals this year, Bloomberg League Tables show, and commands a 21% share of the table while Goldman has almost 23%. However in April it was Macquarie Group Ltd. that dominated Australia's share sales thanks to the sheer number of deals it worked on. NAB's huge institutional placement was the only deal above $200 million that the Australian bank advised on in April, the other nine all raising less than that.

UPCOMING LISTINGS:

Central China New Life Ltd.
- Hong Kong stock exchange
- Size up to $279m
- Expected pricing May 8, trading May 15
- BNP Paribas, Morgan Stanley
Kingsoft Cloud Holdings Ltd.
- Nasdaq exchange
- Size up to $450m
- Expected pricing May 7, trading May 8
- JPMorgan, UBS, Credit Suisse, CICC
- Peijia Medical Technology Co.
  - Hong Kong stock exchange
  - Size up to $302m
  - Expected pricing May 8, trading May 15
  - Morgan Stanley, Huatai
  - Kintor Pharmaceutical Ltd.
    - Hong Kong stock exchange
    - Size up to $300m
    - Pre-marketing from April 27
    - Huatai, UBS
    - Ebang International Holdings Inc.
      - New York
      - Size $100m
      - Filed April 25
      - AMTD, Loop Capital Markets