Investors favor short-term fixed income instruments
Investors favor short-term fixed income instruments
JAKARTA (JP): Lehman Brothers Asia Limited of the United
States has discovered that institutional investors in Indonesia
favor short-term fixed-income instruments.
Lehman Brothers' vice president and head of credit research,
Stephen M. Taran, said in a presentation here yesterday that 61
percent of its respondents invested in short-tern certificates of
deposits.
About 51 percent of the respondents said that they also put
their investments in commercial papers, he said.
Taran said the survey involved 112 institutions holding total
investible assets of US$75 billion.
The survey also revealed that Indonesian investors use a wide
variety of currencies. "This indicates that liberalization of
capital flows has opened Indonesia to global investment
opportunities as evidenced by currencies held and type of
instruments used," he said.
He said 84 percent of the 112 surveyed institutions said they
used the U.S. dollar, while 76 percent use the rupiah, 37 percent
the Japanese yen. The Singapore dollar and the German mark came
an equal fourth, with 32 percent of responding institutions
saying they used the currencies.
Twenty-one percent of the institutions use the British pound,
16 percent the Hong Kong dollar and 15 percent the Australian
dollar, he added.
Of the bond investors, 77 percent preferred to have their savings
instruments denominated in rupiah, 12 percent in the U.S. dollar,
eight percent in the yen and three percent in other currencies,
he said.
Rupiah
Taran said the survey also showed that rupiah-denominated
instruments were held by investors in 12 Asia-Pacific countries.
Rupiah-denominated instruments were held by 30 investors from
Singapore, 22 from Japan, 18 from Australia and 14 from Hong
Kong, he said.
He said Lehman Brothers was focusing its survey on Indonesian
investors because of its liberal regulations on external capital
flows, rapid growth, wealth accumulation spread over a large
population and active involvement of the government in promoting
the development of savings institutions.
He said 48 percent of the surveyed institutions were corporate
treasuries, 24 percent banks, 19 percent brokerage, leasing, real
estate and public sector financial institutions, six percent
insurance companies and three percent investment management
firms.
A group of 15 professionals were involved in the survey.
Lehman Brothers was the co-lead manager for the international
securities offering of PT Kalbe Farma (raising US$100 million
from its dragon bond issue), co-lead manager for PT Indosat's
initial public offering (generating US$1.1 billion in capital),
and is an adviser to the Paiton power project in East Java. (kod)