State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest Bank, listed Foreign currency bonds of $600 million under its $10 billion Global Medium Term Note Programme on India INX’s Global Securities Market (GSM), GIFT IFSCs leading primary market platform for raising funds from global investors.
The bond was issued through SBI’s London branch and was priced at a record low coupon of 1.80 per annum. This demonstrates strong investor confidence in the country’s largest bank and paves way for a strong pipeline of foreign currency bond issuances in the year 2021.
SBI has been one of the largest issuers of bonds who have listed their foreign currency bonds on India INX with a total of $2.6 billion listed on the Global Securities Market platform with this listing.
Since launch of Global Securities Market, it has been the leading listing platform for bonds at GIFT IFSC. The Global Securities Market platform of India INX offers fund raising guidelines at par with other international venues.
MTNs established on India INX platform since launch in Jan 2018 are of value over $48.5 billion and listing of bonds aggregate to $24.5 billion. On January 12th, 2021 India INX derivatives turnover touched a new high of $16.86 billion. The Exchange has made listing of Global Depository Receipts and REITs available and will soon permit listing of InvITs.
India INX, a subsidiary of BSE Ltd, commenced its trading activities on January 16, 2017 and is India’s first International Exchange set up at GIFT City. It is one of the world’s most advanced technology platforms with a response time of 4 microseconds and operates for 22 hours a day to allow international investors to trade from anywhere across the globe.
The exchange provides a common platform for all asset classes – equities, currencies, commodities and interest rates. The exchange also offers a primary market platform for debt securities and proposes to offer additional fund raising facilities like depository receipts once the required infrastructure is in place.
India INX offers a diversified portfolio of products and technology services at a cost which is far more competitive to Indian exchanges as well as other global exchanges like those in Hong Kong Singapore, Dubai, London and New York. The exchange being located in IFSC, GIFT City, provides competitive advantage in terms of tax structure and supportive regulatory framework. These include benefits in security transaction tax, commodity transaction tax, dividend distribution tax and long-term capital gain tax waivers and no income tax.
