Temasek Holdings’ $450m SingTel equity placement and $1.37bn exchangeable bond placement in SingTel
Morgan Stanley was manager of the issue of the notes as well as the global co-ordinator and bookrunner for the offerings of the notes and the shares
In January 2004, Temasek Holdings, the Singapore government-owned investment company, placed out part of its stake in SingTel in a move aimed at improving the liquidity of SingTel’s stock in the public market, and widening the stock’s institutional investor base.
The share offering was carried out in conjunction with a simultaneous offering of exchangeable notes, convertible into SingTel stock. The deals were the largest Singaporean equity and equity-linked transactions since 2001.
The key challenges included: an accelerated timetable to market the deal; the inaccessibility of SingTel’s management; the high equity component to the transactions, equivalent to approximately 30 days’ average daily turnover; and other difficulties affecting distribution.
As testament to the success of the execution, strong demand was generated across a broad geographic investor base. Following the transaction, both the share price and exchangeable notes were trading stronger.
