Credit Suisse has appointed a new head of Philippines coverage, replacing former co-heads Chiqui Huang and Johnny Escaler, who have left the bank.
Michael de Guzman joins the Swiss bank from Macquarie Group where he spent 17 years in different roles, most recently as head of Macquarie Capital Philippines.
In his new Manila-based role, de Guzman reports to the bank's co-heads of South East Asia investment banking and capital markets (IBCM), Pankaj Goel and Rizal Gozali.
At Macquarie, de Guzman advised on a number of deals including SM Prime's $8 billion real estate restructuring and $400 million equity deal, plus Emperador's $700 million acquisition of Whyte & Mckay, the Ayala/Metro Pacific consortium’s LRT-1 transaction and SM Investment Corp's $530 million initial public offering.
His predecessors, Huang and Escaler, had been co-heads at Credit Suisse since 2012. During their five-year tenure, the bank maintained a solid presence in the equity and debt league tables despite limited cross-border issuance, or sizeable equity deals.
The bank has been a key presence on sovereign bond deals for the past two decades, most recently acting as a lead manager for the Republic's $2 billion accelerated switch tender offering, this January.
The bank was one of the lead manager's for BDO Unibank's Ps60 billion ($1.2 billion) rights offering, also in January, whose size marked a rare exception to the issuance norm.
Foreign investors have held a negative view of the Philippines since the second half of 2016. According to Credit Suisse’s own research, the Philippines is the only Asian market where they have been net sellers relative to market capitalisation year-to-date.
The PSEi Index has had a strong run, up 13.55% to Friday’s close. But the bank’s research arm says valuations are looking rich given stocks are averaging 19 times forward earnings, at the high end of their four year historic range.
