Standard Chartered, the UK-based emerging markets bank, and ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steel company, are considering listing in India using a domestic depositary receipt programme.
The proposed listings are still at an exploratory stage.
But they would be the first international groups to take advantage of the Indian depositary receipt scheme, marking an important step for the country's emerging stock market.
"It is certainly something to be looking at," said a person familiar with the issue.
" India is very important to Standard Chartered. It is the bank's second-largest market, accounting for 17 per cent of its profits, and the bank has 19,000 employees in India ."
India 's regulators introduced the local depositary receipt scheme some time ago, but the programme has yet to take off in spite of attempts to ease the rules and make them more attractive to issuers.
The government wants to attract listings by groups from neighbouring countries and from multinationals to promote liquidity and improve options for local investors.
"There is a keenness on the part of regulators to push ahead with IDRs as part of aspirations to make Mumbai an international financial centre," said Tarun Kataria, chairman of HSBC Securities and Capital Markets India.
The person familiar with StanChart's plans said the bank, which is already listed in Hong Kong and London, was weighing up its options and an IDR issue "might or might not happen".
But if it did go ahead, StanChart could list in India as early as the end of this year or early in 2009.
The bank would want to time a listing with any moves by the government towards greater liberalisation of the domestic banking industry, allowing faster expansion by foreign banks.
The higher valuations in India 's market, with the BSE Sensex rising fivefold over the past five years to 16,063.18 points on Monday, could also prove attractive to foreign companies.
India 's financial sector trades at a trailing price to earnings ratio of about 30.8 compared with StanChart in London, which trades at 18.3, according to Bloomberg data.
StanChart declined to comment.
Arcelor Mittal said it was "certainly an option we are looking into".
The two companies have said in the past that they would like to list in India but have not disclosed details.
Mr Kataria said there were still technicalities that would need to be clarified before a deal could be completed.
These included issues such as how issuers could export the proceeds of IDRs, whether IDRs could be exchanged for global depositary receipts or underlying overseas stocks, and how to treat taxation of dividends earned in different jurisdictions.
