Herbert Smith Freehills has advised the joint bookrunners and lead managers on the S$350 million fixed rate bond offering by TML Holdings Pte. Ltd., the Singapore incorporated wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Motors and the holding company of Jaguar Land Rover PLC. This offering represented the first bond offering by the Tata Motors group on the Singapore Stock Exchange and the largest ever unrated Singapore dollar bond by an Indian corporate.
The offering was oversubscribed 4.8 times, with a final order book of S$1.7 billion from over 80 accounts across Singapore, Hong Kong and Europe.
TML Holdings, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Motors, was the issuer for this transaction. The funds raised will be used to redeem preference shares issued to Tata Motors and for general corporate purposes.
The offering represented a number of important milestones in the Singapore Dollar bond market, including being the largest-ever five-year Singapore Dollar bond benchmark by an Indian corporate issuer, the largest-ever unrated Singapore Dollar bond by an Indian issuer and also the largest-ever bond offering from an issuer in the automobile sector in the Singapore Dollar bond market.
The Herbert Smith Freehills team was led by partner Philip Lee with support from senior associate Gareth Deiner and associate Nupur Kant.
The team advised the joint bookrunners and lead managers on this transaction, which were Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited, Citigroup Global Markets Singapore Pte. Ltd. Deutsche Bank AG, Singapore Branch and Standard Chartered Bank.
“With interest rates remaining high in India, we are seeing an increasing number of Indian companies look to Singapore and other established capital markets in the Asia Pacific region to place significant offerings,” said Philip Lee. “This transaction is the first from the Tata Motors group in the Singapore dollar market and the largest we have seen from an automobile company. It is also the largest unrated offering by an Indian corporate that we have seen in the Singapore dollar market. This is evidence of a growing trend where Indian companies are looking to broaden access to other capital markets and diversify their investor base.”
