VSNL completes five years of listing at the New York stock exchange
August 22, 2005

Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL), India’s truly global telecommunication service provider, today completed five years of listing at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the largest equity marketplace in the world. The occasion was marked by the ringing of the “opening bell” by Ratan Tata, chairman, Tata Group, which started the commencement of trading at NYSE on the Indian Independence Day. VSNL was among the first Indian company to be listed on NYSE when its American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) were listed on August 15, 2000.

The ringing of the bell by Mr Tata underscored the global nature of VSNL’s business and was a rare honour to the Tata Group as he rang the bell for the second time in about a year. The chairman of the $17 billion Tata Group had last year rung the NYSE ‘opening bell’ when the ADRs of Tata Motors were listed at the NYSE.

“It is an honour to celebrate VSNL’s fifth anniversary of listing at the NYSE on Indian Independence day. The NYSE listing has given the company greater international visibility and is in many ways, a reflection of our global vision”, said Subodh Bhargava, chairman, VSNL.

“Over the last three years, VSNL has re-engineered its business from an India-centric ILD voice player to a truly global telecom service provider. Some of our recent initiatives, including the Tata Indicom Cable and the TGN acquisition have helped us achieve our goal of consistently reducing international bandwidth tariffs”, said N Srinath, director on the board of VSNL.