The term-lending institution priced its ADS at $9.8 each--representing five common shares of the company at Rs 85.75 per share--raising $315 million, including a greenshoe worth $40 million. Speaking to The Financial Express from the New York Stock Exchange, ICICI managing director and CEO KV Kamath said: "It's incredible. It's unbelievable. We have received tremendous response for the issue with $1.6 billion worth of orders received against an issue size of $275 million." In effect, the ICICI issue was oversubscribed 5.8 times.

Kamath became the first CEO of an Indian company to ring the NYSE trading bell in the over two centuries that the exchange has been in existence. The company has been allotted the trading symbol of IC by the exchange.

ICICI'ssenior general manager Kalpana Morparia said the maximum response came from the USA and retail investors accounted for $300 million worth of bids made. Indian banks operating abroad also lapped up the issue.

The price of $9.8 translates into a slender discount of 0.3 per cent over the prevailing five-day average Global Depository Receipts (GDR) bid price of $9.83. However, in rupee terms, the equivalent of the GDR price works out to Rs 85.74, while the ADS price was Rs 85.75. This represents a slender premium of 0.1 per cent.

An ICICI release said at Rs 85.75 per share, the price represents a 10.3 per cent premium to the five-day average price of the share on both domestic exchanges--BSE and NSE--after adjusting for the fact that ADS holders will receive dividend only for half the year.

ICICI officials said that the slender discount to the GDR price was because of the dividend impact. While the GDR price has taken into account a dividend outflow of Rs 3, the ADS price will not show this as ADS holderswill be entitled to dividend only for half the year. ICICI's GDR on Wednesday surged by 7.2 per cent in mid-session to touch $10.80.

Ahead of the listing on NYSE, the ICICI share on the BSE hit the upper end of the circuit, closing at the day's high of Rs 86.35. The counter clocked a volume of 23.3 lakh shares on the BSE.

"The underlying strength of the demand and the quality of the orders received were such that ICICI was able to price the issue at a premium even to the five-day average GDR bid price on the London Stock Exchange," the ICICI statement said. ICICI allocated the order with a great deal of care in order to ensure that the maximum allocations were provided to the highest quality investors, it added.

Commenting on the issue, DSP Merrill Lynch chairman Hemendra Kothari said: "The overwhelming response to the ICICI offering is an indication of the healthy appetite international investors have for quality Indian paper." DSPML is one of the lead arrangers to the issue along with JM MorganStanley and the Kotak Mahindra-Goldman Sachs combine.

Using three teams of senior management, ICICI spanned the entire globe in a week and received orders for its ADSs totalling over $1.6 billion. "The issue saw strong demand coming from all over the world with US-based investors providing the largest proportion. Reflecting the strong underlying positve sentiment towards India and ICICI, US based retail investors poured in $300 million worth of orders providing orders well in excess of the total issue size," the ICICI statement said.

After the ADR issue, the collective foreign holding in ICICI will go up to around 45 per cent. The finance ministry has directed the institution to cap the foreign holding at 49 per cent.

With the completion of the ADR issue, the term-lending institution will complete its Rs 2,165 crore capital raising programme in the current fiscal. On September 9, ICICI raised Rs 499.99 crore worth of capital through a preferential allotment of shares to its three principal domesticinstitutional shareholders--Life Insurance Corporation, General Insurance Corporation and Unit Trust of India.

Subsequently, it raised about Rs 300 crore from the domestic capital market through an equity issue. The Rs 275.21 crore issue with a 10 per cent greenshoe option was oversubscribed to the tune of 1.75 times. ICICI priced both the preferential as well as the retail equity issues at Rs 73.

After the preferential, domestic equity and ADR issues, ICICI's paidup capital will go up to around Rs 810 crore from Rs 514 crore. The institution's authorised capital is pegged at Rs 1,600 crore.

INSIGHT
A vote of confidence

The ICICI listing price is good news for the company but can also be taken as a positive development for the Indian market as a whole. The NYSE listing price reflects the market's positive view on ICICI and also on the Indian economy in general, since the bulk of ICICI's revenues still comes from providing long-term finance to Indian industry. The stock was locked atthe upper limit in the domestic markets and is likely to see the same result on Thursday as well.