Bank of America Merrill Lynch Asia Pacific Chairman shares key insights at AmCham luncheon

“Historic growth opportunities are emerging for Sri Lanka and other Asian countries,” Brian Brille, Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Chairman of Asia Pacific, told the American Chamber of Commerce in Sri Lanka at a luncheon in Colombo.

Brille spoke at an AmCham event held on 13 February and attended by US Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Maldives Michelle J. Sison, and senior business and finance leaders from across a broad range of industries in Sri Lanka and the related State sectors. The Sri Lanka Institute of Directors (SLID) partnered AmCham in organising this event.

Special opportunities that existed for Sri Lanka included the development of the country’s tourism industry and the potential to develop Colombo Port City into a free trade zone and international hub of sea transport into South East Asia, he said.

“We are at the beginning of one of the most important periods in world corporate history,” Brille said, “with Asian domestic champions poised to evolve into regional and ultimately global leaders.”

Brille said the rise of Asia global leaders was a “mega trend” which was occurring in part because Asian companies were developing scale, deepening management expertise and achieving dominance in their local markets. Asian mergers and acquisitions activity now accounted for around one third of global M&A activity, with almost half of these transactions cross-border. Inbound activity into South East Asia was a fundamental trend in Asia cross-border M&A, with strong investment coming from Japan and, increasingly, China.

Brille said Asian equity capital markets continued to grow stronger and deeper, creating large numbers of Asian publicly traded companies. Four of the six largest initial public offerings in the world last year were from Asia, and there were more publicly listed companies with a market capitalisation in excess of $1 billion in Asia than in the US.

In terms of debt markets, around 25% of global debt issuance in 2012 was raised via the public bond markets in Asia, compared with just 8% only 10 years ago.

Although a lack of scale was a challenge for Sri Lanka, local companies could make the most of the country’s competitive advantages, including its strong macro environment, its focus on developing infrastructure, its talented and entrepreneurial workforce, and the effective source of capital available from the CSE Exchange, he said.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML) has a very active investment banking presence in Sri Lanka headed by Sharhan Muhseen. BofAML was awarded the best foreign investment bank in Sri Lanka by Finance Asia for 2012.