L&T Finance NCD issue opens, plans to raise up to Rs 1,000cr

Engineering major Larsen & Toubro group firm L&T Finance today opened its debentures issue to raise up to Rs 1,000 crore to fund its financing activities, including lending and investments.

L&T Finance along with L&T Capital Holdings would offer 50 lakh secured non-convertible debentures (NCD), debentures that cannot be converted into equity, at Rs 1,000 each, totaling to Rs 500 crore, with an option to raise an additional Rs 500 crore if the subscription is over subscribed, the company said.

The NCD issue is with various investment options and yield on redemption of up to 10.5 per cent. The issue would close on September 4, 2009.

The NCDs have been rated AA+ by rating agency CARE and LAA+ by ICRA, which indicate low credit risk.

Talking on L&T Finance's growth plans, L&T Executive Vice-President (Finance) R Shankar Raman said, "We have asset base of Rs 5,500 crore as of March 31,2009. We plan to grow that by about 25 to 30 per cent in the current fiscal."

He further said indications in the first three months of the current fiscal have been encouraging and L&T Finance hopes to do better in the coming month.