ICICI Bank to raise $500 million via bond sale

MUMBAI: ICICI Bank, the country's second largest bank, raised $750 million in a dollar bond sale at a coupon of 4.80%. The biggest private bank by assets sold bonds with a tenor of five-and-a-half years at about 355 basis points above the comparable US treasury bonds, said three people familiar with the transaction.

"This is the first 144A Reg S issue sold to qualified institutional buyers since the talks of US tapering started since May 22," said a person familiar with the deal but did not want to be identified. ``The bank received an order book of $3.5 billion. Investors from Europe subscribed to 30% of the issue while US investors subscribed to 36% of the issue," he said.

An email query sent to ICICI Bank did not elicit any response.

Ratings company S&P has assigned BBB- long-term issue rating to a proposed issue of US dollar-denominated senior unsecured notes of the bank.

The merchant bankers include Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, Citi, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Standard Chartered.

For ICICI Bank, this is a part of the $5-billion medium-term note programme and the private lender has raised $3 billion so far.

This is the third bond sale by the private sector lender so far this year. ICICI Bank had raised SGD 225 million (Singapore dollars) early January in a seven-year bond sale programme through its Dubai branch at a coupon of 3.65% and a 1-billion Chinese yuan issue (around $100 million) in June.