You can't grow a company without effective financing," notes Marc Monyek, senior director of Asia Pacific Middle East finance for Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald's. China is the company's fastest growing market: $26 billion McDonald's has more than 1,300 restaurants in the country, and between 2006 and 2010 its China revenues grew from $782 million to $1.5 billion. Accordingly, when China opened its offshore market for renminbi-denominated bonds—dubbed "dim sum" bonds—to foreign corporations, McDonald's was keen to access the market.

McDonald's had explored the possibility of issuing renminbi bonds several times over the previous six years but conditions had never been right. But in 2010, regulators permitted multinational corporations to issue renminbi-denominated bonds in Hong Kong, giving investors a new vehicle for the deposits that had been rapidly building up in the offshore market. Monyek jumped at the chance to access the market first.

"Standard Chartered called me with the idea in May and we worked on it as fast as was practical," says Monyek. "We got the approvals done in August, and we went to market the day that we got the approvals."