Vedanta Resources $1 billion 6.375% bond offering

Overview:

• Vedanta Resources, an Indian mining and metals company—listed on the London Stock Exchange and owned by Anil Agarwal—raised $1 billion via a bond issuance.
• The bonds will be listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange.
• It is the largest single tranche G3 high-yield bond issuance by an Indian company since 2015.
• The deal included two separate transactions that ran in parallel. The first transaction was the bond issue and the second was the tender offer for the company's earlier outstanding bonds.
• The proceeds will be used to refinance the company's near-term debt obligations.
• The transaction will help the company reduce interest payments to replace the near-term debt obligations with longer tenor paper.
• Vedanta Resources has redeemed $371 million of the 2018 bonds and $425 million of the 2019 series bonds. The $379 million of 2018 bonds and $774.77 billion of 2019 bonds will remain outstanding nonetheless.
• According to S&P, Vedanta Resources has bank loan maturities of $1 billion at the Vedanta Resources holding company due in FY18 and $500 million in FY19, on top of bond maturities of about $2 billion in FY19.
• The bookrunners were Barclays Bank, Citigroup Global Markets, JPMorgan Securities and Standard Chartered Bank.

Wai Yee Tsang - Journalist - Asia Pacific