S&SEA & Middle East Corps: 2026 Outlook
Jordan Chalfin, CFA: Head of Technology - CreditSights
Lakshmanan R, CFA, FRM: Head of South & Southeast Asia Corporates - CreditSights
Jonathan Tan Jun Jie: Analyst, South & Southeast Asia Corporates - CreditSights
Nicole Chua: Analyst, South & Southeast Asia Corporates - CreditSights
8 December 2025
Insights into S&SEA & Middle East Corps: 2026 Outlook, including:
- Macroeconomic Resilience Amid Trade Headwinds: Explore how the S&SEA & Middle East Corps 2026 Outlook forecasts sustained economic growth in India, Indonesia, and Malaysia despite US tariff pressures, with central banks maintaining supportive monetary policies.
- Sector-by-Sector Credit Analysis: Discover detailed credit outlook assessments across steelmaking, renewables, power utilities, metals & mining, and transportation sectors, highlighting improving trends for airports and stable fundamentals for seaports.
- High-Yield Special Situations Deep Dive: Evaluate critical HY credits including Vedanta Resources, Genting entities, Indika Energy, and Biocon Biologics, with detailed deleveraging trajectories and refinancing risk assessments.
- New Issuance Pipeline and Market Opportunities: Identify potential 2026 dollar bond issuers including Greenko, JSW Steel, Medco Energi, and Saudi Aramco, as YTD issuance already exceeds $13.5 billion compared to 2024’s $10.8 billion.
- Indian Renewables Landscape and Restricted Group Dynamics: Understand holdco versus restricted group leverage metrics for major renewable players like Adani Green Energy, ReNew Power, and Greenko, with capex expectations and refinancing outlooks through FY27.
Executive Summary
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In our 2026 outlook for South and Southeast Asian (S&SEA) and Middle East Corporates, we highlight macroeconomic trends, corporate performance, potential new issue candidates for next year, and 2026 fundamental outlooks for indivdual companies categorised by industries.
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We provide our in-depth 2026 outlooks for the weak HY or “special sits” credits including Vedanta, SMC Global Power, Indika Energy, Genting Bhd, Genting Malaysia, and Biocon Biologics.
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We expect Improving or Stable-Improving credit outlooks for companies in the consumer foods, steelmaking, telecom, transportation (seaports and airports), Stable or Mixed credit outlooks for Indian renewables, power utilities and metals and mining sectors and a Stable-Deteriorating credit outlooks for oil & gas sector.
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We have also made a few recommendation changes and highlight our key picks and pans including security-level preferences or dislikes.
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We expect the S&SEA and Saudi Arabian economies to broadly remain resilient even with US tariffs inevitably posing headwinds to exports growth in 2026, though Thailand remains the laggard in the region and Philippines could face challenges.
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S&SEA corporate $ new issuance picked up YoY in YTD 2025 to $13.5 bn (2024: $10.8 bn), and we expect new $ issuance to grow further in 2026 across all IG/HY/unrated buckets; notable candidates include Greenko, JSW Steel, Medco Energi, SMC GP, Thai Oil, ReNew Power and Saudi Aramco.
