CARE foraying into overseas market, starting from Portugal

Rating agency CARE is in the process of foraying into the overseas market with the first office to come up in Portugal next year, a senior company official said today.

"We have signed MoU (memorandum of understanding) with a local rating agency in Portugal. The reason to have the MoU is because he (the local partner) has the licence from ESMA (European Securities and Markets Authority) to start an agency.

"We have planned to take over 20 per cent stake in it and start operations...," CARE Ratings Chief General Manager T N Arun Kumar told reporters here. Observing that a client of CARE Ratings in India, if required to raise foreign currency bonds needed to have an approval from an International agency rating, he said, "We want to be an alternative to rating agencies like S&P and Moodys."

Towards this initiative, the firm was in the process of setting up an international rating agency, ARC Ratings, along with five countries.

Elaborating, he said the local rating agencies of Brazil, South Africa, Malaysia and India will form a memorandum of understanding with a rating agency based out of Portugal.

"Each agency (from the five countries) will have 20 per cent stake. We expect to begin operations (of that agency) by first quarter of next financial year", he said.

Commenting about the proposed Initial Public Offering which will hit the capital market tomorrow, he said the objective of this IPO is to get "listed".

The firm's promoters - Canara Bank, State Bank of India and IDBI Bank - along with six investors will dilute their stake through this IPO, he said.

The minimum of Rs 504 to a maximum of Rs 540 crore will open for subscription on December seven and close on December 11, ICICI Securities Assistant Vice-President (Corporate Finance) Javeed Siddiqui said.  "The company proposes to sell 7.19 million shares through the issue, wherein the price of each share is Rs 700-750, " he said.

Kotak Securities, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, Edelweiss Capital, ICICI Securities, IDBI Capital and SBI Caps are the lead-managers to the IPO.