ICICI Securities’ primary equity capital markets business surged in the past year, beating local rivals and bulge-bracket banks, which is one reason why it is Asiamoney’s pick for best securities house in India in 2021.
After a lull in the second quarter of 2020, the market returned in force with a series ofmulti-billion-dollar fundraisings from Indian banks, plus a stream of IPOs and qualified institutional placements.
Despite the severe disruption of Covid-19 in India, ICICI was able to snap up business as soon as it returned, consistently winning mandates; it worked on a total of 48 deals in the year to June 30.
The haul included trades pretty much every month, with a combined value of $21.4 billion, or 58% of the market, which put the firm at the top of Dealogic’s India ECM league table for the 12-month period. In the previous year, to June 30, 2020, ICICI was mandated on just 10 ECM trades with a total value of $10.2 billion. Axis Capital, which was last year’s winner of the award, SBI Capital and Kotak Mahindra Capital all trailed behind ICICI.
ICICI’s