Bank of America emerges as the lead arranger of cross-border finance

Wednesday, December 24 1997

Bank of America emerges as the lead arranger of cross-border finance

Raghu Mohan

MUMBAI, Dec 23: Bank of America (BankAm) has emerged as the leading arranger of cross-border finance in the country for the first 11 months of the calendar year by tying up $1.09 billion for domestic corporates. ANZ Investment Bank (ANZIB) comes second having arranged $788.90 million with ABN Amro Bank in the third position with $662.83 million.

BankAm's success is juxtaposed with a corpus of $5.18 billion in 59 cross-border transactions arranged by the top ten players in this genre. In the last calendar year, the figure stood a shade above $4 billion, said sources.

Figures put out by the International Financial Review (IFR) ranks Citibank fourth followed by the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), Fuji Bank, Toronto Dominion Bank, Sakura Bank, State Bank of India (SBI) and NatWest.

According to IFR, BA Asia -- the HongKong-based investment banking arm of Bankam -- arranged $1.09 billion in 14 deals and secured a marketshare of 21.21 per cent for bringing in domestic loan offerings in the international markets.

ANZIB comes a distant second with its $788.90 million in eleven deals and a marketshare of 15.21 per cent. ABN Amro Bank arranged $662.83 million in eight transactions and had a marketshare of 12.78 per cent.

The IFR figures are for the period January 1, 1997 to November 30, 1997. Few external borrowing loan offerings have hit the international markets after November-end. Sources say only two major deals -- the $70 million odd Tata-Bell Canada loan lead managed by BankAm and Toronto Dominion Bank, which is in the market for syndication now, and the recently concluded $85- million loan of Tisco -- may have been left out of the current IFR tabulations.

The major transactions arranged by BankAm include the Indian Petrochemical Corporations Ltd's (IPCL) credit-enhanced $175-million foreign-currency convertible bonds (FCCBs) done along with Goldman Sachs, Reliance Petroleum's $300-million loan offering with ABN Amro Bank, Toronto Dominion and Bankers Trust, a $600-million loan of Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) with HSBC, the $283 million Birla-AT&T telecom deal with Toronto Dominion and a $70 million offering by Tata-Bell Canada (in the market now). ABN Amro Bank arranged a $1-billion (two tranches of $500 million each) external loan for IOC along with Dresdner Bank and Krediet Bank.