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A fierce debate is under way among bond market specialists in Asia. Some believe the reg-ion’s markets are at last coming of age, but others fear the current boom will turn out to be shortlived and that there will be a return to their normal role of poor relations to the likes of New York and London.
亚洲债券市场专家正展开激烈辩论。一些人认为该地区的债券市场正最终成熟，还有一些人担心，当前的热潮只是昙花一现，与纽约和伦敦等市场相比，亚洲债券市场将重新回到通常的微不足道的角色。
Bond issuance in the region soared in the past year to reached record levels in international dollar-denominated debt by early May. Fewer local borrowers are registering to market their deals in the US, which implies they are more confident about their ability to raise money locally. That suggests that Asia is generating deeper pools of capital from sources with a better understanding of local needs and regional norms.
截至5月初的过去一年，该地区以美元计价的国际债券发行规模飙升至创纪录水平。到美国推介债券的亚洲借款者数量减少，这暗示，他们对于在本地融资的能力更为自信。这表明，亚洲正从对本地需求和地区规范更为了解的来源建立更深的资金池。
Arguably, more important for those backing a “this-time-is-different” view is the level of innovation apparent in bond transactions across the Asia-Pacific region. Lawyers are proving instrumental in devising and enabling these breakthroughs.
对于支持“这次不同”观点的人而言，更为重要的大概是亚太地区债券交易明显体现出的创新水平。事实证明，律师对于设计和实现这些突破发挥了作用。
Examples of innovative deals in the past year include: “forest bonds”, in which interest is paid in carbon credits; China’s first “covered” deal, where the funds borrowed are backed by a ringfenced pool of collateral; and the first renminbi-denominated special drawing rights bonds, before the Chinese currency had even joined the International Monetary Fund’s SDR basket.
过去一年创新交易的例子包括：“森林债券”，用碳信用支付利息；中国首只绿色资产“担保”债券，借入的资金由专门的资产提供担保；以及首只以人民币结算的特别提款权(SDR)债券，这甚至是在人民币加入国际货币基金组织(IMF) SDR篮子之前。
As well as that, borrowers’ legal advisers produced innovative ways to work across borders and in vastly differing legal systems in order to develop forms of financing in which internat-ional investors feel comfortable taking the risk of investing onshore in China and elsewhere.
除此之外，借款人的法律顾问发明出创新的方法跨境和在迥异的法律体系内工作，以开发新的融资方式，让国际投资者安心承担在中国和其他地区投资的风险。
Along the way, some of them have battled with bureaucracy and persuaded government institutions to accept new financing structures. A few have even trekked for days through rainforests to research their projects.
同时，一些法律顾问与官僚体制作斗争，并说服政府机构接受新的融资结构。有一些甚至徒步数日穿过雨林进行项目研究。
Conservation projects have proved a popular field for bond market innovation everywhere. In Asia, it includes the world’s first “forest bonds”, sold by the International Finance Corporation, an arm of the World Bank, which raised $152m to finance forest conservation. The five-year bonds offered interest of 1.55 per cent in either cash or in carbon credits sold by the Kenyan forest scheme the deal will support.
事实证明，对于债券市场创新而言，环保项目在任何地区都是颇受欢迎的领域。在亚洲，它包括全球首只“森林债券”，由世界银行(World Bank)下属机构国际金融公司(IFC)发行，共筹集1.52亿美元，为森林保护提供资金。债券期限为5年，利率为1.55%，利息要么以现金支付，要么以此次债券发行将支持的肯尼亚森林项目发售的碳信用支付。
“It is hard to get professional funds flowing into conservation,” says Martijn Wilder, the Sydney-based head of Baker McKenzie’s climate change and finance team, which structured the deal. “One way of doing that was to use a traditional financing tool to raise money, which could be directed into forest conservation.”
“很难让专业资金进入环保领域，”贝克?麦坚时(Baker & McKenzie)气候变化和金融团队驻悉尼负责人玛泰恩?维尔德(Martijn Wilder)表示，“一种方法是利用传统融资工具筹资，可以用于森林保护。”该团队负责安排这笔债券的发行。
Critical to the deal was a $12m commitment by miner BHP, which will pay the interest if the investors — which include funds such as TIAA, and Calstrs, the California teachers’ pension scheme — opt for cash instead of carbon.
对这笔交易至关重要的是矿商必和必拓(BHP)的1200万美元承诺，如果投资者选择收取现金而非碳信用，必和必拓将支付利息。这些投资者包括美国教师退休基金会(TIAA)和加州教师养老金计划(Calstrs)等基金。
“The truth is that many investors don’t know much about carbon credits. The point is to expose them to that,” says Mr Wilder. “[The investors] have to elect each year whether to take credits or cash. If they are really savvy, they should be able to sell the credit for a higher price than the cash interest.”
“事实是很多投资者不那么了解碳信用。关键是让他们明白，”维尔德表示，“（投资者）必须每年选择是接受碳信用还是现金利息。如果他们真的了解情况的话，他们应该可以以比现金利息更高的价格出售碳信用。”
Another regional first was a renminbi-denominated deal backed by the IMF’s basket of currencies, known as special drawing rights. While SDR products — essentially backed by a basket of dollars, euros, yen, sterling and renminbi — are commonly used as reserve assets by central banks, the aim was to highlight China’s impending inclusion as a reserve currency, which took place in October.
另一个亚洲第一是以人民币结算的SDR债券。SDR是IMF的货币篮子。SDR产品（主要由美元、欧元、日元、英镑和人民币货币篮子提供支持）被央行普遍用作储备资产，但当时发行这笔债券的目的是突出人民币即将被纳入SDR储备货币篮子（于去年10月纳入）。
The World Bank raised 500m in SDRs — about $700m — through the deal, which was more than two times oversubscribed.
世界银行通过该交易筹资5亿SDR——约7亿美元，认购倍数超过两倍。
Although rare, SDR bonds are not themselves new: the innovation lay in making this particular deal possible. One challenge was that the China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS), run by the People’s Bank of China, did not publish reference rates for all SDR currencies at the same times each day.
虽然SDR债券较为少见，但它本身并非新事物：创新使得这笔交易成为可能。其中一个挑战是，中国人民银行直属的中国外汇交易中心(CFETS)此前并非每天同一时间公布所有SDR货币的参考汇率。
“The PBoC’s system captured the points but they weren’t publishing them — so it had to revise its system,” says Christine Chen, a partner at King & Wood Mallesons, who praises the efforts of Chinese central bankers to make the innovation work. “They don’t always have much flexibility. But they really want to take the market structure forward and they want to attract international issuers and the very best international investors.”
“中国央行的系统获取了数值，但他们不对外公布——因此它必须修改该系统，”金杜律师事务所(King & Wood Mallesons)合伙人陈已昕(Christine Chen)表示，“他们的灵活度不够。但他们确实想推进市场结构，想吸引国际发行方和非常出色的国际投资者。”
Other innovations in the region dealt with challenges that are more familiar to lawyers: structuring complex deals to very tight time-tables.
该地区其他创新解决的是律师更熟悉的挑战：在非常紧张的时间表中安排复杂的交易。
A 27-strong team from Hogan Lovells, for example, was needed to structure a $70m investment by Goldman Sachs’ private equity arm into Red Planet Hotels.
例如，霍金路伟律师事务所(Hogan Lovells)需要派一支27人的队伍，来安排高盛(Goldman Sachs)的私募股权部门向红色星球酒店(Red Planet Hotels)投资7000万美元的交易。
This fast-developing budget chain has am-bitions to expand across the region but still lacked the scale to appeal to many banks. The time-table facing Hogan Lovells was just two months. Structuring the loan involved taking onshore security over the chain’s assets in countries that are often considered risky in legal terms, including Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.
这家快速发展的连锁酒店有在亚洲扩张的雄心，但其规模仍然不足以吸引很多银行。霍金路伟律所的时间表只有2个月。安排贷款，涉及对该连锁酒店在包括泰国、印尼和菲律宾在内的多个国家——这些国家在法律方面通常被认为存在风险——的资产安排境内抵押。
Allan Wardrop, the partner who led the deal, concedes that innovation in such transactions can be hard to replicate in the next deal because of the differing complexities that are involved in each one. But he nevertheless predicts a growing market for similar private equity-based funding.
牵头该交易的霍金路伟律所合伙人艾伦?沃德罗普(Allan Wardrop)承认，由于每笔交易涉及的复杂问题不同，此类交易中的创新很难在下一次交易中复制。但他仍然预测，类似基于私募股本的融资市场将快速发展。
“There aren’t so many debt funds yet, but I think they will increasingly be looking at this type of deal — particularly in Asia where you’ve got high-growth businesses who can’t yet tap the mainstream markets,” he says.
“目前还没有太多的债券基金，但我认为他们将日益关注此类交易——特别是在亚洲，这里拥有快速发展、但尚未能触及主流市场的企业，”他表示。
