Indian companies invest heavily abroad

Indian companies financed record 351.36 billion rupees (8.17 billion US dollars) on overseas capital market in the first five months of this year, Business Line reported Friday.

The newspaper quoted India's leading database for capital market Prime Database as saying that Indian companies had conducted 77 overseas issues from January to May this year.

Among these issues, 282.37 billion rupees (6.57 billion U.S. dollars) were financed by 45 foreign currency convertible bonds ( FCCB) and four plain bonds while 68.98 billion rupees (1.6 billion US dollars) came from equity offering.

According to Prime Database, Indian companies are among the biggest FCCB issuers this year, compared with their Asian counterparts. They raised about 3.96 billion U.S. dollars through FCCB in the first five months.

FCCB has developed as a type of convertible bond issued in a currency different from the issuer's domestic currency, which means the money being raised is in the form of a foreign currency.

And a convertible bond acts like a bond by making regular coupon and principal payments but the bondholders are able to convert the bond into stock.

Analysts here noted that Indian company rushed for FCCB due to cheaper fund in overseas market and the trend may keep rising in the future.

Source: Xinhua