PETALING JAYA: Maybank Investment Bank Bhd (Maybank IB) has issued structured warrants over stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), becoming the only issuer in Malaysia for ringgit-based warrants over NYSE-listed companies.
The launch comprises six new call and put warrants over Bank of America, Citigroup and the first-ever warrants in Malaysia over Wells Fargo.
These warrants, which are tradeable on Bursa Malaysia starting yesterday, allow investors to capitalise on their views of three of the top four largest banks in the US by total assets.
Maybank IB head of investment management Azzahir Azhar said, “Structured warrants have become increasingly popular and we believe that the addition of US-listed stocks to our offering will generate strong interest from investors in Malaysia.
“Against the backdrop of inflation and growing recession fears coupled with the recent banking turmoil, there is opportunity for further movements in the share prices of the three US banks in our maiden launch today,” he said in a statement.
The warrants are designed with a longer tenure to provide investors with more time to potentially profit from movements in the underlying share. Additionally, with the ease of the Live Matrix tool, investors can track the potential prices of the structured warrants at various levels of the respective underlying NYSE-listed stock prices. This enables them to estimate their warrant price movements based on their views of the underlying shares’ target prices.
Structured warrants over foreign-listed stocks allow investors to gain exposure to foreign markets with a much lower capital outlay and without the need for a foreign trading account. Besides, investors can settle their trades in the local currency.
“As an award-winning structured warrants market maker, we continue to monitor popular names among investors as well as other exciting stock markets that we can add to our offering. We were the first to have recently introduced structured warrants over companies in Malaysia with market capitalisation of at least RM500 million and last year, we launched our first warrants over Hong Kong-listed stocks.
“We will continue to work closely with Bursa Malaysia to increase retail participation by making more investment choices available,” Azzahir said.
Azzahir Azhar