About FinanceAsia

FinanceAsia

FinanceAsia is a Hong Kong-based financial publishing company and magazine covering Asia's capital markets, established in 1996. Its magazine has been described as the leading financial markets magazine in Asia, published 11 times a year with an audited circulation of 21,620, and its website, financeasia.com, is a daily updated service carrying deal news, people moves and the personalities who drive Asia's financial markets. The company is based in Hong Kong, with bureaus in Beijing, Singapore and Sydney, and it has been described as the largest Asian-based financial publishing company, with more than a dozen full-time journalists covering the capital and financial markets. In mid-2003 FinanceAsia was acquired by Haymarket Publishing, the British group owned by Lord Michael Heseltine, the former British deputy prime minister. From its founding on the eve of the Asian financial crisis, FinanceAsia built its reputation on reporting the deals — equity, debt and merger transactions — through which Asia's companies, banks and governments raise money.

FinanceAsia belongs to a cluster of Hong Kong-based specialist finance titles. Alongside its sister publication AsianInvestor, and Haymarket stablemate CorporateTreasurer, it forms part of Haymarket Media's finance portfolio in Asia, which Haymarket says reaches an audience of 80,000 active financial markets professionals and delivers content in digital, print and live events in more than ten city destinations a year. That portfolio context explains FinanceAsia's modern shape: a magazine and website at its centre, surrounded by awards programmes, conferences and daily news for a defined professional readership rather than a general newsstand audience.

Established in 1996, on the eve of crisis

FinanceAsia was established in 1996, a quarter of a century before it marked its 25th anniversary in 2021 and three decades before its 2026 magazine celebrated its 30th anniversary. Its timing shaped its journalism. FinanceAsia itself, looking back in its 2021 Country Awards, noted that its early years were dominated by tycoon-driven excesses and currency mismatches, setting the stage for the Asian Financial Crisis. That crisis prompted root-and-branch reform of the banking industry right across the region, providing, in FinanceAsia's words, the foundations for the exponential growth that followed over the next two decades. A publication founded to cover capital raising in Asia thus spent its first years covering a collapse, and the reforms and restructurings that followed it.

From those beginnings, FinanceAsia positioned itself around transactions. Its coverage, as described by institutions that win its awards, provides in-depth news and analysis on equity, digital assets, debt and merger and acquisition deals, offering insights into Asia's evolving business landscape. It is described by the Bank of the Philippine Islands, announcing its 2024 award wins, as the leading capital markets publication in the region, founded in 1996. That positioning — capital markets first, general business second — distinguishes FinanceAsia from broader Asian business magazines and from daily newspapers, whose finance pages must serve a wider audience.

The magazine: eleven issues a year and an audited circulation

FinanceAsia magazine is published 11 times a year. Its audited circulation was given as 21,620 in the publisher's own description of the title, a figure that reflects its model: a controlled, professional circulation aimed at people who work in and around Asian finance, rather than mass newsstand sales. An audited figure matters in this segment because advertisers and sponsors buy access to a verified professional audience, and a title that submits to audit can prove the seniority and geography of its readers in a way unaudited titles cannot.

The magazine carries the longer form of FinanceAsia's work — cover stories, features, interviews, polls and the full write-ups of its awards. When FinanceAsia announced its 2021 Country Awards winners, for example, it noted that full write-ups explaining the rationale behind each choice would be published online and in the summer edition of FinanceAsia magazine. Its anniversary editions have performed the same reflective function at greater length: the 2026 magazine marking 30 years reflected on covering Asia-Pacific's capital markets for three decades, including the region's top five initial public offerings and merger and acquisition deals in that timeframe.

Haymarket ownership from 2003

In mid-2003 FinanceAsia was acquired by Haymarket Publishing, described at the time as the largest privately owned publishing company in the United Kingdom, owned by Lord Michael Heseltine, the former British deputy prime minister. Haymarket itself dates to 1957, when Michael Heseltine and Clive Labovitch, who had met at university, started out with a directory of opportunities for graduates; it was rebranded as Haymarket Media Group in 2007 to reflect its growing online and live events presence. Haymarket remains privately owned and headquartered in London.

Under Haymarket, FinanceAsia became the anchor of a wider Asian finance business. Haymarket has described its finance portfolio as launched with the acquisition of FinanceAsia and now also comprising AsianInvestor and CorporateTreasurer, together with a research joint venture, East & Partners Asia. In Asia, Haymarket Media is headquartered in Hong Kong and describes itself as a digital, events and data-driven business creating specialist content for audiences in the finance and marketing communications sectors. Its Hong Kong team, based in Quarry Bay, and its Singapore team in the central business district work across brands that also include Campaign and Spikes Asia. In 2019 Haymarket Media entered a strategic collaboration with Regulation Asia, noting clear demand from readers of FinanceAsia, AsianInvestor and CorporateTreasurer for comprehensive regulatory news.

Bureaus in Beijing, Singapore and Sydney

FinanceAsia is based in Hong Kong, with bureaus in Beijing, Singapore and Sydney. That footprint mirrors the structure of the markets it covers: Hong Kong as a listing and fundraising centre for Chinese and regional companies, Beijing as China's political and regulatory capital, Singapore as Southeast Asia's financial hub, and Sydney for the Australian market. The publisher's description also stresses the size of its reporting team for a specialist title — more than a dozen full-time journalists covering the capital and financial markets — making it, in its own description, the largest Asian-based financial publishing company of its kind.

Hong Kong remains the centre of gravity. Haymarket Media's Hong Kong address is given on FinanceAsia newsletters as 12/F, FWD Financial Centre, 308 Des Voeux Road Central, Sheung Wan, and its daily newsletter operations — including subscription and partnership contacts — are run from there. A Hong Kong base also puts its journalists in the same city as the stock exchange where many of the region's largest share sales, including those of mainland Chinese companies, are executed, and close to the bankers, lawyers and regulators who structure them.

What FinanceAsia covers: deals, markets and people moves

FinanceAsia covers the capital markets in the broad sense: equity capital markets, debt capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, loans, and the banks, brokers and law firms that execute transactions. Its website was described by its publisher as a daily updated, award-winning website featuring all the latest deal news, people moves and personalities who drive Asia's financial markets. People coverage is a deliberate part of that mix — in investment banking, senior hires and departures signal where institutions are building or retreating, and FinanceAsia's readers follow them as market news in their own right.

Later descriptions add newer subject matter to the same core. The Bank of the Philippine Islands' 2024 summary lists equity, digital assets, debt and M&A among the areas on which FinanceAsia provides news and analysis. Its anniversary history series, 25 Years of Evolving Asian Capital Markets, published in 2021, worked chronologically through the events that shaped its beat, from the crisis years of 1996 to 2000 through China's Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor scheme in 2002, the renminbi de-pegging in 2005, the Bank of China and ICBC initial public offerings in 2006, and the global financial crisis of 2008, when emerging Asian stock prices dropped more than 60 percent. The series illustrates the title's method: market history told through transactions and turning points.

The Achievement Awards and Country Awards

Awards are central to FinanceAsia's identity and to its commercial model. Its Achievement Awards recognise the year's landmark deals and the best banks and investment banks in Asia. The 2002 edition illustrates the format: Bank of China's restructuring and US$2.67 billion initial public offering won Deal of the Year and Best Privatization; Petronas's US$2.73 billion bond won Best Bond Deal; Citigroup won Best Bank and Best Commercial Bank; and Goldman Sachs was named Best Investment Bank for the third time in six years, on the strength of its work across equity, equity-linked and M&A transactions. A separate Japan Achievement Awards programme applies the same approach to the Japanese financial year.

The Country Awards, by contrast, name the best banks, brokers and law firms country by country, with domestic and international categories. In 2021 the programme covered markets across the region, naming, in China alone, ICBC as Best Bank and CICC as Best Investment Bank for domestic institutions, and HSBC and Goldman Sachs as the leading international bank and international investment bank. FinanceAsia said that year's winners were picked with the help of an editorial advisory board, whose members were named in its announcement. Winners use the awards prominently in their own communications: the Bank of the Philippine Islands announced in 2024 that it had been named Best Bank in the Philippines, Best Sustainable Bank for the fifth consecutive year, and Best Corporate Bank, with its investment arm BPI Capital named Best Investment Bank and Best Debt Capital Market House. Such citation by regulated banks is both evidence of, and a contributor to, the awards' standing.

Readership among Asia's business elite

FinanceAsia's readership is professional and senior. The publisher's audited circulation figure of 21,620 is modest beside consumer magazines, but its value lies in who those readers are: bankers, fund managers, corporate treasurers, lawyers and advisers working in Asian finance. Independent readership research on Asia's business elite, published by Campaign Asia for the BE Asia study, found FinanceAsia reaching 11 percent of that elite audience among monthly titles in 2010, ahead of Asiamoney's 9 percent in the same table — a measure of penetration among senior decision-makers rather than of raw copy sales.

That audience is also the market for Haymarket's wider finance portfolio. Haymarket has put the combined active audience of its financial brands at 80,000 financial markets professionals, with live events in more than ten city destinations annually. FinanceAsia's readers are therefore served not only in print and online but in person, at awards dinners — the 2002 Achievement Awards dinner was held at the Conrad Hotel in Hong Kong — conferences and roundtables where the bankers it writes about meet the issuers and investors on the other side of their deals.

FinanceAsia today: digital, events and thirty years of capital markets

FinanceAsia today operates as a multimedia specialist publisher rather than a magazine alone. Its daily newsletter, FinanceAsia Daily News, circulates its latest stories to subscribers, with editorial and partnership contacts based at Haymarket Media in Hong Kong. Its website organises coverage around markets and transactions, and its social and awards operations extend the brand through the year. The print magazine, still published 11 times a year on the publisher's description, remains the place where its biggest set-piece journalism — anniversary retrospectives, award rationales and major features — appears in full.

Its longevity is itself part of the story. Founded in 1996, acquired by Haymarket in 2003, and marking 30 years with its 2026 magazine, FinanceAsia has covered a complete arc of modern Asian finance: the speculative excess and crisis of the late 1990s, the banking reforms that followed, China's opening to foreign investors and its giant state bank listings, the global financial crisis, and the growth of sustainable and digital-asset financing in more recent years. For the bankers, issuers and investors who make up its readership, it functions as both a news service and a record of the region's deal-making — including, through its Achievement and Country Awards, one of the industry's own verdicts on which deals and institutions defined each year.