IFR: India’s corporate bond market still lacks depth and sophistication. What is Sebi doing about it? Sinha: Sebi has recently taken a whole range of steps to develop and deepen the corporate bond market. We have issued guidelines to set up dedicated debt segments on stock exchanges with separate platforms for retail and institutional investors. This has already been implemented by NSE, BSE and MCX-SX. We have established a risk management framework for the dedicated debt segments of stock excha

Several Indian companies are turning to offerings of asset-backed bonds as an alternative source of funding and bankers expect the trend to accelerate as many cash-strapped issuers from the infrastructure and real-estate sectors spot an opportunity to save on borrowing costs. A handful of asset-backed structures emerged in 2015, pointing to the growing popularity of a format that can be tailored to suit the demands of both issuers and investors. “Structured bonds offer good opportunity of divers

There are two main challenges to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s grand infrastructure ambitions. First, domestic banks, traditionally the biggest lenders to the infrastructure sector, are sitting on a mountain of bad debt and are in need of capital. Second, India’s homegrown infrastructure sponsors are also nursing damaged balance sheets, constraining their ability to develop new projects. The government is acting with a sense of urgency to address both, creating a significant opportunity for the

Will India have a proper working bankruptcy law in place soon? The country’s premier Narendra Modi certainly thinks so. At a technology summit in Bengaluru in the first week of October, Modi said his government was actively “working on a new bankruptcy code and a company law tribunal” intended to simplify the tax code, ease the process of doing business onshore, and deal with issues that often varied from state to state, such as how contracts were enforced and how companies were created and gove

By any measure, Indian banks are badly in need of more capital. Fitch Ratings has come up with an eye-popping estimate of US$140bn for all kinds of capital, while Standard Chartered sees the need for as much as US$53.4bn in Common Equity Tier 1. Indian banks have until 2019 to meet Basel III capital requirements in full. However, the capital shortage has been apparent for years and, to date, there has been little notable progress to remedy the situation. While banks around the world have taken d

IDFC Bank, newly established as a full-scale lender on October 1, is taking on a crowded market. Besides India’s 27 state-owned and 20 private sector lenders, the Reserve Bank of India has also given in-principle approval to 11 applicants to set up payment banks, which can accept deposits and remittances, but will not lend. The regulator will also allow 10 microfinance institutions to convert into small finance banks. Rajiv Lall, managing director and CEO of newly established IDFC Bank, sees the

India has opened the door for companies to sell rupee bonds overseas in an attempt to attract new investors and lower the country’s cost of capital. Shrugging off its conservative image, the Reserve Bank of India relaxed rules to allow corporate borrowers to issue so-called Masala bonds in late September in a move seen as a measured step towards full currency convertibility. At least a dozen Indian companies, both state owned and private, plan to enter the market as early as the end of October o

India’s equity capital markets are set for the biggest year in a decade, with a boost from the comeback of IPOs and a string of mega stock offerings at a time when the rest of Asia is struggling to recover from the Chinese stock-market debacle. At the end of the third quarter, total ECM issuance stood at Rs1.2trn (US$18.5bn) from 104 transactions, according to Thomson Reuters data. The IPO market, in a deep slumber for the last couple of years, has sprung back to life. According to the Securitie

India’s prime minister has been busy of late. Narendra Modi spent much of his first year in charge of the world’s largest democracy globetrotting, visiting industrial powerhouses like South Korea and Japan, while courting Sri Lanka and Myanmar, neighbouring states that have, in recent years, been sucked into China’s widening commercial orbit. The former teaboy who turned his home province of Gujarat into a manufacturing and technology hub has become something of an international political rock s

Eighteen months into Narendra Modi’s government, things are looking up for India. Growth is quickening, inflation is under control, and reforms are coming through. Harnessing that momentum, however, remains a constant challenge, and India’s prime minister will need to work hard if he is to come close to meeting his grand ambitions. With growth back up above 7%, India has shrugged off the “fragile five” label that hammered its currency in 2013 and dodged a credit rating downgrade that would have