On Monday, shares of Standard Chartered were trading at £16.24 on London Stock Exchange

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(LSE), not too far from its all-time high of £18.46, reached on March 25 this year. This means investors subscribing to Standard Chartered’s India Depository Receipt(IDR) issue on Tuesday and up to the end of this week will be investing at close to the all-time high of the bank stock.

Investors were left grappling on Monday to make sense of the Rs 100-115 per IDR book-building price band. The issue — the first-ever IDR issue in India — opens for subscription on Tuesday and the bank aims to mobilise between Rs 2,400 crore and Rs 2,760 crore from the issue.

Ten IDRs of Stanchart convert into one ordinary share of the bank, which is listed on LSE. Taking this into consideration and the current British pound-Indian rupee exchange rate of 67.60, the rupee pricing of the issue at Rs 100-115 per IDR translates into £14.79 to £17.01 per share.

This is the actual price the IDR subscribers will be paying to acquire one share of Stanchart. The bank’s shares were trading at £16.23 in the middle of Monday’s session on LSE. If the bank’s IDR issue price were to be fixed at the upper end of the price band at Rs 115 per IDR on the closure of the issue, it will mean a subscriber will be paying £17.01 per share.

Before touching its all-time high this March, the stock had hit a high of £17.16 on December 10, 2007, but then it fell to a six-year low of £5.86 following the meltdown in the financial system. At £5.86 a share on the LSE, one IDR would trade at about Rs 39.62.

Analysts are not really concerned about Stanchart trading near its all-time high on LSE.

“We feel most banks having exposure to emerging market economies, including India’s own banks such as HDFC Bank, are trading near their all-time highs and it may not mean they are over-valued,” argued Pram-od Gubbi, equity sales director at Execution Noble.

Sharekhan research he-ad Gaurav Dua said, “If valuations support a stock price, I would not look at it in terms of it being close to its all-time high.”

When contacted, Stanchart India’s media relations head Arijit De said, “we cannot give a comment officially.” But another Stanchart official, who did not wish to be named, said the bank was the only one to have come out stronger from the financial crisis and the stock price was reflecting the high-growth story.

The Stanchart issue of 240 million IDRs makes up for 24 million shares. Agai-nst the existing paid-up ordinary share capital of £2,028 million, this amou-nts to 1.18 per cent of the bank’s existing capital base.