Jones Day Wadia Ghandy Amarchand Latham and Clifford Chance lead on GTL Infrastrutures restructuring of 320 million FCCBs

Indian telecommunications tower company GTL Infrastructure has completed the restructuring of Foreign Currency Convertible Bonds (FCCBs) worth $320 million. The zero coupon FCCBs were due on November 29, 2012..Jones Day advised GTL Infrastructure with a team led by Singapore Partners Manoj Bhargava and Joe Bauerschmidt and London partners Giles Elliott and Sebastian Orton along with Associates Karun Cariappa and Thomas Rooks and Of Counsels John Taylor and Amrit Dehal..Wadia Ghandy & Co. advised GTL Infrastructure on Indian law with a team led by Mumbai Partner Fariyal Tahseen..Amarchand Mangaldas Delhi Partner Gunjan Shah and Latham & Watkins acted for certain bondholders..Clifford Chance Partner Rahul Guptan along with Associate Tom Bidwell advised Citicorp International as trustee for the new bonds and Citibank London Branch, as trustee for the exchanged bonds..The company’s debt holders voted earlier this month to exchange their existing bonds with two new series of convertible bonds due in 2017..According to Jones Day release, the transaction, structured as an exchange offer of the existing bonds with two new series of convertible bonds, was the largest convertible bond restructuring for an Indian company..Jones Day Partner Manoj Bhargava, said, “this was a groundbreaking transactions for a number of reasons – the two series of bonds being issued, the necessity of the approval of the CDR lenders and the state of the CB markets. We are delighted to have had the opportunity to work with GTL Infrastructure and the GTL management team.”.GTL Infrastructure, together with its subsidiary, is the largest independent telecommunications tower company in India, by number of towers owned, and as of September 30, 2012, owned over 32,500 towers across all 23 telecom circles in India.