JPMorgan names Simon Page head of SEA debt team

JPMorgan has named Simon Page as head of a newly formed Southeast Asia debt capital markets team and plans to add more debt bankers in Singapore to capitalize on a boom in bond issuance.

Page will retain his current role as co-head of high yield and sovereign business in Asia excluding Japan, but will relocate from Hong Kong to Singapore, according to an internal note seen by Reuters.

"Over the next few months, we will make additional resource commitments to this new team," said Murli Maiya, head of debt capital markets for Asia ex-Japan in the note.

Page recently worked on bond issues such as Singapore-based MMI International's $300 million five-year senior notes and Berau Coal Energy's $500 million high-yield bonds.

There has been a boom in bond issuance across Asia, fuelled much more by intra-regional investment than was the case in the past, debt syndicate bankers say.

Primary bond offerings from Singapore-domiciled issuers alone more than doubled to $26.9 billion in the first nine months of 2012 from the same period a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters data.

(Reporting by Saeed Azhar; Editing by Kevin Lim)