IOC bags Rs1684cr in Singapore bond issue

Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOC), the state-owned upstream producer, said on Friday that it has garnered 400 million Singapore dollars (Rs1,684 crore) through a 10-year bond issue ''at very competitive rates''.

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, the company said in a statement.

''IOC became the first Indian corporate to successfully price long-term bonds denominated in Singapore dollars,'' it said. P K Goyal, director (finance) at IOC, added that the issue size was increased to Singapore $400 million from the originally planned S$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 on Thursday on the back of a successful one-day road show in Singapore, attended by over 50 prospective investors including private banks and fund managers.

''The announcement saw orders to the tune of S$300 million within half an hour,'' the statement said. ''Based on the overwhelming response at initial stage, investors started pouring in and by 4 pm the book had already touched the S$ 3 billion mark, i.e. 7.5 times of the S400 million, the amount finally retained by IOC.''

This is the first time IOC has raised money in Singapore dollars. Hitherto, it had stuck to US dollar denominated debt. 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, the oil producer said.