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Regulators are putting pressure on Asian banks and corporates to unwind cross-shareholdings. As such, a handful of banks have restructured their equity units in anticipation of new monetisation business. Nick Sawyer reports.

The slump in global stock markets has put the brake on many equity-linked corporate transactions over the past year. As stocks languish at low levels, firms have thought twice about entering the capital markets to monetise assets or unwind cross-shareholdings, waiting instead for markets to bounce up to more alluring levels.

In Asia, however, both corporates and financial institutions are coming under mounting pressure from regulators to drastically slash the level of cross-shareholdings on their