Bharti Airtel to raise funds via foreign currency bonds

NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel today initiated sale of foreign currency bonds, which will be used for repayment and refinancing of existing foreign currency debt, among others. The company said its subsidiary Bharti Airtel International (Netherlands) has approached investors for issuance of debt instruments in the form of US $ and Euro denominated senior unsecured guaranteed notes.

The dollar bonds, with tenure of 10 years, will be listed on Singapore stock exchange whereas Euro bonds will 7 years tenure, will be listed on the open market of the Frankfurt stock exchange. In March this year, the company had raised around Rs 2,453.2 crore through issue of bonds in the Swiss market.

In December 2013, the Sunil Mittal-led firm had raised euro 750 million (about Rs 6,350 crore) in the first such bond issue by an corporate and received bids worth euro 3.8 billion. The company than re-opened the issue in January and raised 250 million euros.