The lender's comfortable liquidity position, combined with downward bias in interest rates and slow credit growth expectations in the first three months of this financial year, has allowed it to take this decision.
The deal is stuck because the Reserve Bank of India has declined to transfer the branch licences of RBS to HSBC.
The life insurance arm of the country's largest private-sector lender does it not to expand workforce, but to maintain its strength, as almost a similar number of staffers keeps leaving every month.
For instance, a pack of 20 Classic branded cigarettes (from ITC) now costs Rs 120.
In absolute terms, close to 9.2 million customers (almost equal to Mumbai's suburban population) have defaulted on loan repayment. Microfinance institutions currently have around 32 million clients in the country.
Before joining IndusInd Bank, he was the regional head of RBS' corporate solutions business in Asia Pacific region and was based in Singapore.
Kotak Mahindra Bank has acquired the non-performing portfolio of Barclays Bank's credit card business in India. The deal, experts said, gives momentum to the sale of stressed loan market in the country which has been having a dry run following stringent regulatory norms introduced in 2007.
Bankers and industry analysts say a number of public and private sector banks have expressed willingness to offer fresh loans to Indian companies to help them repay their overseas dues maturing in the near term.
Barclays Finance, the non-banking finance arm of Barclays Corporate in India, plans to close the majority of its branches here, as part of the lender's plan to scale down retail operations in the country.
Bank will charge floating rates of interest from January.
According to sources familiar with the developments, the bank may sell more than Rs 3,000-crore (Rs 30-billion) worth of retail assets in India comprising mortgage loans, personal loans and loans to small businesses.
The deal, which will be signed this week, will see Standard Chartered Bank adding 170,000 cards to its existing portfolio of 1.1 million cards. The foreign lender will also become the fifth largest card issuer in the country after HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Citibank and State Bank of India.
While most bankers see advances growing 16-18 per cent this financial year, they expect credit expansion to slow to less than 16 per cent in 2012-13.
Move comes as stringent regulation chokes biz growth.
Link loan disbursals with firming up of steady supply of raw material.
Fears of banks' earnings plummeting in a deregulated savings deposit rate regime appear to have gripped investors, with most analysts hinting that profitability may come under pressure due to higher cost of funds amid slowing growth in advances.
We are looking to target individuals who have the potential to become high-value clients in the future. It is possible to target this segment with the help of powerful data analytics.
The regulator had earlier asked these banks to submit a road map and give a time frame for paring promoters' shareholding to 10 per cent.
Volatility in local share markets have hit India Inc's equity fund-raising plans, with the total deal value this year set to fall below the level seen in 2008.
Standard Chartered Bank appears to lead the race to acquire Barclays Bank's credit card business in India, six months after the British lender decided to sell it, three people familiar with the development said.
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