SingTel prices five-year USD700m bond; offer four times oversubscribed

Southeast Asia’s biggest telecom group by subscribers and revenue, Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel), today confirmed the setting up of USD700 million worth of 5.5-year notes on 1 March, through its wholly owned subsidiary SingTel Group Treasury (SGT). The bond will carry a coupon of 2.375% per annum and will mature in 2017. In a stock market filing SingTel said the note issue was more than four times oversubscribed, attracting a wide range of ‘high quality’ investors, and that it closed the order book after receiving interest of approximately USD3.25 billion. The 5.5-year notes, rated ‘Aa2’ by Moody’s Investors Service and ‘A+’ by Standard & Poor’s, will be used to optimise the Singaporean telco’s debt structure and broaden its sources of funding, it said. The joint lead managers and book-runners in the issue were Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.