Tata Steel's GDR issue oversubscribed

21 Jul 2009

The world's sixth largest steelmaker by capacity, Tata Steel, today announced having raised $500 million through a global depositary receipts offering, saying that it had decided to retain $100 million surplus subscription to its planned $400 million issue.

The company said in a regulatory filing that it was issuing 65.41 million GDRs at $7.644 each, with each representing one equity share. The offering was roughly priced at a 5.4 per cent discount on Tata Steel's closing price on the BSE on Monday.

The GDRs will be listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Koushik Chatterjee"The GDR offering has attracted demand from very good quality investors which enabled the company to increase the offering size," Koushik Chatterjee, Tata Steel group's chief financial officer, said in a statement.

He said Tata Steel has adequate liquidity and has no loan repayments scheduled in the next one year. The funds will be deployed for expansion of the company's largest steel plant in Jamshedpur, Chatterjee added.

Tata Steel plans to raise the capacity of the plant in eastern India's Jamshedpur city to 10 million metric tons per annum over the next few years from 6.8 million tons now.