Through its Singapore branch, ICICI Bank raised SG$ 225 million on Wednesday by issuing Regulation S bonds with a seven-year maturity. The bonds were priced at a coupon rate of 3.65 per cent, a spokesperson of ICICI Bank said.
The arrangers to the issue were ANZ, HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank. The total demand (order book) was SG$ 3 billion from 102 accounts.
ICICI Bank priced the first Singapore-dollar public benchmark issuance of 2013. “ICICI Bank’s Singapore dollar deal helps them achieve investor diversification. They raised the seven-year pricing tighter than the US dollar curve, and establishes a benchmark for them in the Singapore-dollar bond market,” said Jujhar Singh, managing director and head of DCM (debt capital markets) for South Asia, Standard Chartered Bank.
According to Singh, with liquid benchmarks in US dollar, Chinese yuan, Swiss franc, and now the Singapore dollar, ICICI is very well positioned to be able to opportunistically choose from a variety of debt markets to meet its foreign currency funding requirements.
Standard & Poor’s (S&P) Ratings Services had assigned the senior unsecured notes issue ‘BBB-’ while Moody’s had assigned ‘Baa2’. “The rating on the notes reflects the long-term issuer credit rating on the bank,” said S&P in a press release on Wednesday.
The notes will be listed on the Singapore Exchange. “By choosing a seven-year tenor (longest ever tenor Singapore dollar bond by an Indian bank), ICICI was able to attract appetite from high quality insurance companies and fund managers, and a record oversubscription of 13.3x (13.3 times) helped in achieving final pricing 10-15 basis points tighter than ICICI Bank’s existing US dollar curve,” said Singh.
Earlier this week, Exim Bank of India has raised $750 million through 10-year bonds. The coupon for the bond was four per cent. The total demand (order book) was $6.4 billion-plus from 263 investors.
