IFR India Offshore Financing Roundtable 2014: Participants

“First of all, I must thank Keith Mullin for organising what I believe is the very first event on ADR/IDRs reforms in India since the Sahoo Committee reports were submitted. Thank you very much Keith for your interest in India and in these reports. Let me make it clear that it is a Ministry of Finance Committee and I am only borrowing your usage ‘Sahoo Committee’. The very first reforms on the capital account front in India centred on depositary receipt issuance; the process started in 1991 and the scheme was formally launched in 1993. At...

IFR: What has the market impact of the Sahoo Committee recommendations on depositary receipts been? Have expectation levels among Indian issuers potentially looking to issue depositary receipts changed as a result of what is now possible? Neil Atkinson, BNY Mellon: Thanks, Keith. I think before I touch on that question, just two quick things, one is to congratulate Mr Sahoo on two fabulous reports. The second one is to congratulate you for holding this event two days before our annual DR issuer conference that Mr Sahoo will be speaking at. I...

IFR: Of course, the fact that the DR landscape is in the process of being liberalised won’t of itself drive ECM activity. There have to be other drivers. But there have been a host of these emerging recently, whether it’s Indian state companies having to increase their free float, the mooted increase in the FDI cap on the insurance sector, the creation of REITs and infrastructure investment trusts, and of course, the Sensex and the Nifty 50 are very strong. How is the overall India ECM picture looking? Bharat Reddy, JP Morgan: On the...

What was so memorable about the date was that ongoing high levels of optimism and confidence in the country’s prospects, which had been engendered by the election of the reform-minded Modi in the first place, were very much intact. There is a tangible sense in India that good things are going to happen; 100 days had seen little naysaying – even if the government’s record, it’s fair to say, hadn’t seen straight-line success. Another noteworthy achievement was the fact that IFR’s event was the first to focus on depositary receipt reform since a...

IFR: In terms of analogies, the US passed the Jumpstart Our Business Startup Act (JOBS Act) a couple of years ago and one of the outputs of that was effectively to give private companies public company benefits. So private companies benefited from being able to issue stock publically to investors. However, things like transparency, reporting requirements are very limited. Do you have any concerns about unlisted companies tapping public investors but without the reporting requirements international investors require? M.S. Sahoo: We don’t believe...