Morgan Stanley's JPY100 billion convertible offering for NEC, Japan's leading electronics conglomerate, was awarded both IFR's "Asia-Pacific Equity-Linked Issue of the Year 2001" and Asiamoney's "Japan Equity-Linked Deal of the Year." Morgan Stanley served as a Joint Bookrunner and Joint Lead Manager on the offering, which was completed in December 2001, together with Daiwa Securities SMBC.

The Euroyen convertible offering achieved the best terms ever for a Japanese issuer in the domestic or international convertible markets. The deal, NEC's first international Yen convertible, was also the largest convertible offering completed by a Japanese issuer in 2001 and was when priced on November 20, 2001 the largest equity-related offering completed by a Japanese issuer after September 11.

"Japanese companies have generally issued domestic retail-market oriented convertibles on less favorable terms than would have been the case by going to the international markets," said Christopher Mothersill, Head of Equity Capital Markets in Tokyo. "In part, this has been because of their existing relationships with domestic securities houses and concerns about the impact on their share price of hedge funds' trading activities."

Morgan Stanley's global strength in convertibles and knowledge of equity-linked investors gave the client the confidence that they would be able to benefit from the more favorable pricing of an international transaction and the ability to place the offering with long-term investors.

"The transaction, which was multiple times oversubscribed, met all of the objectives of our client and set the new pricing benchmark for Japanese convertibles," said Mothersill. "Reflecting the positive market reaction to the transaction, NEC's stock price increased 9.5% from the launch of the deal to pricing."