Chartered Semiconductor has raised over $1 billion in one of the biggest equity deals from Asia this year. The May transaction was the largest ever follow-on offering from Singapore and the country's second-largest equity deal ever after Singapore Telecom's 1993 privatization.
The deal, with Salomon Smith Barney as bookrunner and Credit Suisse First Boston as joint lead, involved the sale of just over 15.5 million American depositary shares (each worth 10 ordinary shares), including 8.97 million in primary issuance from the company itself, and 5.86 million in secondary shares from majority shareholder Singapore Technologies. It becomes the third deal in Asia to crack the billion dollar mark in the equity markets, after Pacific Century Cyberworks and PetroChina.
The transaction had previously been postponed following the volatility in the market caused by the Nasdaq correction in April. "At the time they pulled the transaction, on any average day you would expect the stock to move up or down by 8%," says Scott Ferguson, managing director and head of equity capital markets at Salomon Smith Barney in Hong Kong. The revamped deal was smaller and cheaper than initially planned. "We priced at a 5.8% discount to the last sale," says Ferguson.