Grab joins the flurry of sales of bonds that can be swapped into stock by Asian companies this year. That’s particularly been the case with Chinese firms as issuers from Baidu Inc to Ping An Insurance Group Co of China announced sizeable deals in recent months.
Aside from possible acquisitions, Grab said it plans some share buybacks — the company has US$274 million remaining under its share-repurchase program as of the end of March. The bonds will be redeemable, under certain conditions, from mid 2028.
As for the GoTo acquisition, Grab on Monday signaled that it was halting or at least pausing a planned US$7 billion acquisition. The pair of ride-hailing and food-delivery companies have held on-and-off talks for years but a combination never materialised, partly because of antitrust concerns likely to arise from combining the two dominant players in Southeast Asia.
Grab’s offering is the largest Asian convertible-bond deal denominated in US dollars since Ping An’s US$3.5 billion deal in July 2024, and the biggest by a non-Chinese company since Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc’s US$1.7 billion issuance in 2023. Ping An last week also issued convertible bonds worth US$1.5 billion, denominated in Hong Kong dollars.
See also: Staying neutral among the highs and lows of 2H2025
Morgan Stanley, HSBC Holdings Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co are joint global coordinators of the deal.
