IOC raises 400 mn Singapore dollar loan

State-owned Indian Oil Corp (IOC) said it has raised 400 million Singapore dollar loan at very competitive rates.

IOC sold 10-year bonds denominated in Singapore dollars (SGD) to raise SGD 400 million (USD 326 million).

It priced the notes to yield 4.1 per cent, better than 5.625 per cent the company had paid for a similar-dated US currency debt in 2011.

"IOC became the first Indian corporate to successfully price long-term bonds denominated in Singapore dollars (SGD)," a company press statement said.

Indian corporates are tapping overseas debt market after the government slashed a tax on foreign borrowing.

IOC Director (Finance) P K Goyal said considering the overwhelming response from investors in terms of tight pricing and substantially oversubscribed book, the issue size was increased to SGD 400 million from the originally planned SGD 300 million. "This benchmark deal has achieved many milestones, being the largest SGD offering by any foreign corporate issuer this year, the largest ever SGD issuance by an Indian issuer and the longest tenor senior note in SGD market by a foreign issuer this year," he said.

IOC said the book building for deal was announced yesterday on the back of a highly successful one day road show in Singapore, which was attended by over 50 prospective investors including private banks, fund managers and banks.

"The announcement saw orders to the tune of SGD 300 million within half an hour," it said. "Based on the overwhelming response at initial stage, investors started pouring in and by 4.00 pm the book had already touched the SGD 3 billion mark i.e. 7.5 times of the SGD 400 million, the amount finally retained by IOC."

The book consisted of orders from over 100 investors and the profile included fund managers (22 per cent), banks (18 per cent) and private banks (60 per cent). In terms of geography, 75 per cent orders came from Singapore and 25 per cent from rest of Asia, IOC said.

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