Oriental Bank of Commerce will retrain the staff of Global Trust Bank to enable them to carry out lending activities at branch level and attain three times more business from the acquired unit.
Of the 1,300 staff of GTB, 160 have quit after the merger despite OBC offering job protection and retaining their high pay package.
"We will retrain the staff of GTB as 90 per cent of their branches did not have any lending operations," OBC Chairman B D Narang said.
As part of its strategy to benefit from the synergy of the merger, OBC is rationalising the tech-savvy private bank's branches and staff, he said.
Before merger, GTB branches were not empowered to take decisions on advancing loans to customers. The decision-making process was centralised.
After taking over GTB, OBC now wants to relegate the powers enjoyed by its branches to the GTB branches as well.
Meanwhile, Oriental Bank has sent personnel from its headquarters to the GTB branches, where employees had resigned, to ensure that business does not suffer.
"We have accepted the resignation of 160 GTB staff," Narang said.
OBC may appoint this week a global consultant to restructure and integrate the troubled GTB with it.
The internal assessment, carried out by the bank on GTB, was delayed due to some valuation problems and a report was understood to have been submitted last week.
The consultant will be asked to look into five important aspects of the merger -- system integration, branch and staff rationalisation, revamp of regional offices and future growth plans to take advantage of the synergy with GTB, Narang said.
OBC gained from 100 odd branches of GTB and 280 ATMs, which increased OBC's branch network to 1,350 and about 400 ATMs.
"We also got a million depositors of GTB, who are expected to stay with us," Narang said.
The total balance sheet size (deposits and loan advances) of OBC surged by about 20 per cent to Rs 65,000 crore (Rs 650 billion) after the merger of GTB.
GTB has a balance sheet size of Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion), while OBC has Rs 55,000 crore (Rs 550 billion) worth of deposits and loan advances.
At present, GTB branches are functioning as OBC branches following lifting of the moratorium on GTB on August 14.
The bank is also on a recruiting spree to bolster its manpower requirement for the increased number of branches and in view of expanding business by 30 per cent to Rs 80,000 crore (Rs 800 billion) in 2004-05.
Vedanta's investment plans in India on schedule
Sterlite Industries India Ltd on Monday said its holding company Vedanta Plc's plans to invest about $2 billion over the next three years to increase the production of metals in the country were progressing as per schedule.
The expansion of the Korba smelter at Balco to 350,000 tpa and the associated power plant was continuing in accordance with the plan, Sterlite Industries India Ltd informed the Bombay Stock Exchange in Mumbai.
Civil construction work was advancing well with equipment now being installed, it said.
The alumina project at Orissa is progressing as per schedule and basic site preparation and piling work is complete while civil works are being completed.
The new 300,000 tonne smelter at Tuticorin is mechanically complete and ready to commission, it said, adding that the new smelter would have only limited production in the current year.
It said the zinc expansion at the Chanderiya smelter is on schedule and the recent delivery of larger haulage equipment for the mine has been commissioned and mill expansion was progressing according to plan.