Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and its unit Reliance Jio Infocomm have raised $2 billion add-on foreign currency loan at the most competitive rates. The move comes days after signing a $3 billion financing in India’s most widely syndicated loan. 

The $3 billion financing closed on March 31, 2023, and the add-on $2 billion thereafter. The fundraising is the largest through syndicated term loans by an Indian corporate house in at least five years. The primary syndication of $3 billion involved around 55 lenders, including nearly 24 Taiwan-based banks as well as global giants such as Bank of America, HSBC, MUFG, Citi, SMBC, Mizuho, and Credit Agricole. The new loan of $2 billion has the same terms as the borrowing signed on the previous loan with 55 lenders, including 40 that joined in two phases of syndication.

The $3 billion borrowing is RIL’s largest syndicated loan and is split into $1.15 billion and 48.78 billion yen ($380 million) tranches with an average life of 5.25 years for RIL, and five-year portions of $1.2 billion and 41.81 billion yen for Jio. 

Further, 18 banks, including 15 senior mandated lead arranger and book runners (MLABs) of the $3 billion loan and others joining in the senior phase, are expected to form the syndicate for the $2 billion add-on, which is split equally for RIL and Jio, and is likely to be wrapped up by the end of April 2023. ANZ, Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole CIB, Citigroup, DBS Bank, First Abu Dhabi Bank, HSBC, Scotiabank, Standard Chartered Bank, State Bank of India and United Overseas Bank were the senior MLABs on the US dollar tranches for both borrowers. Meanwhile, Mizuho Bank, MUFG and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp underwrote the yen tranche for Jio’s loan, with Credit Agricole also lending alongside the three Japanese banks on the yen portion for RIL’s borrowing. DBS is the global coordinator for the $2 billion add-on and was also in that role for the $3 billion borrowing, which paid top-level all-in pricing of 146 bp and 156 bp for the US dollar portions for RIL and Jio, respectively.