Indian Oil Corporation on Monday said that it has issued $500-million worth bonds for a tenor of 10 years under Regulation S format. This is the public sector firm’s fourth international bond issue in the past three-and-a-half years.
Last month, the Federal Open Market Committee had indicated that the US Fed would moderate the asset purchase based on improvement in the US economy. These indications were not taken favourably and markets went into a sell-off mode.
Considering the market conditions, IOC realigned its strategy of bond issuance and postponed its investor meetings and pricing from the first week of July 2013 to second and third week so that markets could cool off and investors’ appetite for investment could resurface as they needed capital deployment after sell-off, IOC said in a statement.
The order book for the bond issue was about $3.5 billion from more than 400 investors. The bond was subscribed by fund managers (64 per cent), banks (17 per cent), insurance and sovereign wealth funds (11 per cent) and private banks (8 per cent).
In terms of geography, 73 per cent orders came from Asia, while Europe and West Asia and US offshore contributed 25 per cent and 2 per cent, respectively.