India Inc debt raising hits near record at $57 billion in 2014: Report

Primary bond offerings by domestic issuers rose by 2.7% to $56.9 billion in 2014 from $55.4 billion a year ago, clocking the second best performance since the record $63.6 billion mop-up in 2012.

The year saw domestic companies tapping the offshore US dollar-denominated bond markets reach a record $14.5 billion, up 21.4% over $12 billion in the previous year, according to the data compiled by Thomson Reuters/ Freeman Consulting.

The financial sector issuers led the chart with 63% of the market share mopping up $34.9 billion, up 2.9% from last year. This is the highest for the sector since 2012 when amount reached to $45.9 billion.

This was followed by the energy & power sector issuers, with $9.5 billion in mop-up or 16.7% of the total issuance, which though is down 5.9% from 2013's record high worth $10.1 billion. The third slot is with telecoms and industrials with 6.9% and 4.2% market share, respectively.

Meanwhile, the rupee bond sales touched record levels since 2012 at Rs 2,533.9 billion in 2014, up 3.7%. In 2012 the proceeds reached a record high of Rs 2,896.3 billion.

Again the financial sector accounted for the majority share of the rupee bond sales at 67.4% with Rs 1,706.2 billion with as many as 421 issues. This was 9.7% more than the proceeds from 2013 at Rs 1,555.2 billion.

Issuance by the energy & power sector players topped the list after financials with 12.4% market share or Rs 313.2 billion in proceeds, which though was down 28% from 2013. Government and public agencies tapped the rupee bond market raising Rs 143.3 billion in proceeds, a massive 188.6% increase from the previous year, according to the report.

Rupee-denominated bonds accounted for 7.1% of Asia's local currency bonds market at $585.3 billion in 2014, while Chinese yuan topped the list with 42%.

Axis Bank topped the ranking for domestic bonds underwritings in 2014 with 12.6% of the market share in with related proceeds of $7.2 billion from 166 deals.

On the total fee front from capital raising through bond issuance generated $138.5 million in the year, a 56.1% increase from last year.

With estimated fees of $18.7 million, Deutsche Bank India took the lead for India bonds fee ranking, capturing 13.5% market share of the fee pool.