Essar group on Friday announced the signing of a USD 2.4 billion (Rs 19,000 crore) deal to sell certain ports and power infrastructure to ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel in one of the largest post-pandemic merger and acquisition deals in India. In a statement, the Ruia-run firm said the deal also envisages a 50-50 joint venture between Essar and ArcelorMittal for building a 4 million tonnes a year LNG import terminal at Hazira in Gujarat. Without giving details, it only identified certain ports and power infrastructure that are primarily captive to operations of the Hazira steel plant, which was acquired by ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel (AM/NS) in 2018-19, as part of the deal.
At interactions last week with senior officials from the Reserve Bank of India, select banks gave feedback on two key bond market concerns, namely, recent volatility in the rupee-dollar exchange rate and heavy losses incurred on floating rate government bonds due to a demand-supply mismatch, sources told Business Standard. The discussions were held ahead of the RBI's next monetary policy statement, scheduled on August 5. Indian banks are large holders of government securities because of a regulatory mandate to set aside a certain percentage of deposits in sovereign bonds.
Although such alerts are not compulsory for the banks, this may become the norm now if payments are missed even for a day.
Low cost of funds and low credit growth have meant unprecedented levels of capital adequacy ratios (CARs) for banks.
State Bank of India, Bank of India and Punjab National Bank have sought permission to open branches in Pakistan, the government said in Parliament on Tuesday.\n\n
After the finance minister directed public sector banks to join the account aggregator (AA) ecosystem, 5-6 major ones, including State Bank of India (SBI) and Bank of Baroda are expected to go live by July-end. Sahmati, an industry alliance for the AA ecosystem, has been working with PSU banks to get them onboarded for quite some time now. So far, Union Bank of India and Punjab National Bank (PNB) have gone live on the AA ecosystem. While Union Bank has been live for a while, PNB went live earlier this month.
Fitch Ratings on Monday said the plan to privatise two state-owned banks in the current financial year ending March 2022 could face delays amid renewed challenges for the Indian banking sector due to the second wave of Covid-19. The government in the Budget announced plans to privatise two public-sector banks. NITI Aayog has been entrusted with the task of selecting the banks and one general insurance company for the privatisation.
A banking Trojan malware has been detected in the Indian cyberspace that is lurking to attack bank customers using Android phones and has already targeted those from more than 27 public and private sector banks, the country's federal cyber security agency said in a latest advisory.
The subsidiary will become operational by the end of the second quarter and cater to Indian corporates and expatriates in Malaysia. In the joint venture, BOB will hold 40 per cent stake, IOB 35 per cent, while Andhra Bank will hold the rest 25 per cent. Initial investment is pegged at Rs 405 crore (Rs 4.5 billion).
Subhash Shankar Parab, a key accused in the Rs 7,000 crore diamantaire Nirav Modi bank fraud case, was "deported" from Cairo on Tuesday after a long diplomatic and legal process, officials said in New Delhi. A CBI team had gone to Egypt's capital to bring back 50-year-old Parab, who was allegedly kept in illegal confinement in a Cairo suburb by Modi, the fugitive diamantaire, they said. The CBI had been chasing Parab, deputy general manager (finance) in Modi's Firestar Diamond and understood to be a key witness to the Letters of Undertaking (LoU) submitted to the Punjab National Bank (PNB) to siphon off over Rs 7,000 crore, they said.
If the banks throw caution to the winds for building loan books, the hydra-headed bad loans may resurface and spoil the party, warns Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Making a strong case for banning cryptocurrencies, Reserve Bank Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar on Monday said they are even worse than ponzi schemes and threaten the financial sovereignty of a country. Observing that crypto-technology is underpinned by a philosophy to evade government controls, he said they have been specifically developed to bypass the regulated financial system. More substantially, he added, cryptocurrencies can wreck the currency system, monetary authority, banking system, and in general the government's ability to control the economy.
The government may soon give the green light to bilateral trade between Russia and India in their national currencies to avoid any trade disruptions, multiple people aware of the matter said. While the Department of Commerce has recommended the proposal, an announcement is likely to be made by the finance ministry after further deliberations between the Department of Economic Affairs and Department of Financial Services. "The finance ministry will take a call on how to peg the two currencies," a senior government official told Business Standard. In the past, the two nations have had rupee-rouble trade, and when such an arrangement is implemented again, it will bypass the sanctions imposed on Russia by the West.
India's banking industry will see a lot of mergers in the near future and emerge as the best in the world in 20 years, a senior banker said on Tuesday.
The Reserve Bank on Thursday permitted banks to increase charges for cash and non-cash ATM transactions beyond free monthly permissible limit from next year. Bank customers will have to pay Rs 21 per transaction, instead of Rs 20, with effect from January 1, 2022, if they exceed the monthly limit of free transactions. "To compensate the banks for the higher interchange fee and given the general escalation in costs, they are allowed to increase the customer charges to Rs 21 per transaction. "This increase shall be effective from January 1, 2022," the RBI said in a circular.
At a time when banks are engaged in a fierce battle to gain market share in the credit card segment, Citibank India has been losing its share, both in terms of outstanding cards and spends in the last few years. Still, average spends on Citi cards are higher than any other Indian bank. Last year, the global banking behemoth announced exit from its consumer banking franchises in 13 markets across Europe, Middle East and Asia, including India, citing lack of scale.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said his government is using all channels including diplomatic to bring back high-profile economic offenders, leaving them with no option but to return to the country. Speaking at a symposium on credit flow and economic growth, he asked banks to support wealth and job creators with proactive lending while promising to stand by any loans given in right earnest. "In our attempt to bring back fugitive (economic offenders), we relied on policies and law and also used diplomatic channels.
For now, the concerns over bad loans have taken a back seat; a bigger challenge for the banking community is credit growth, explains Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Moody's Investors Service on Thursday said second wave of Covid infections has increased asset risks for Indian banks, but a severe deterioration is unlikely. It said that the second wave of coronavirus infections in India has exacerbated stress among individuals and small businesses that were hit the hardest by the initial outbreak. Still, a number of factors will prevent sharp increases in problem loans, and banks have sufficient buffers to absorb anticipated loan losses.
Many banks' profits will take a hit and a few of them could even end up being in the red because of treasury losses, triggered by a sudden spike in government bond yields in the rising interest rate cycle, notes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
One thing is for sure: It smacks of the regulator's lack of confidence in the bank's board, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Funds parked by Indian individuals and firms in Swiss banks, including through India-based branches and other financial institutions, jumped to a 14-year-high of 3.83 billion Swiss francs (over Rs 30,500 crore) in 2021 on a sharp surge in holdings via securities and similar instruments while customer deposits rose as well, annual data from Switzerland's central bank showed on Thursday.
Indian companies are expecting generous tax incentives from the Union Budget that will help them invest more in building capacities in the coming years. While the productivity-linked incentives (PLIs) are a good start to spur local manufacturing, the government should also take steps to boost consumer demand, which is not showing encouraging signs, say chief executive officers (CEOs) of India Inc. Statistics released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) shows that Indian banks had sanctioned loans worth Rs 75,558 crore in 220 new projects - a record low - in the pandemic-hit financial year ending March 2021. This is not showing any signs of a significant pick up in the last nine months of the ongoing financial year.
Quarterly earnings and global cues will be the major sentiment driver for the equity market this week, according to analysts. Of late, Benchmark indices have been on a record-breaking run. "Quarterly results will dictate market sentiment and will be the talk of this week as they pick up the pace. "D-Street will be all ears to any management insights to forecast the future earnings trajectory.
A UK court hearing an urgent application on Monday refused to sanction the release of substantial sums held with the Court Funds Office (CFO) as part of bankruptcy proceedings being pursued against liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya by a consortium of Indian banks, led by the State Bank of India (SBI).
Reliance Industries Ltd, the country's largest company by revenues, profits and market value, has topped Indian corporate in the World's Best Employers rankings 2021 published by Forbes. Reliance was placed at 52 in the overall ranking of 750 global corporates likes Phillips, Sanofi, Pfizer and Intel. Other Indian names in the top 100 rankings were ICICI Bank at 65, HDFC Bank at 77 and HCL Technologies at 90, according to the Forbes ranking.
The new list has just 85 banks operating in India whose statements will be accepted for purposes of student visas.
Why are investors gung-ho about State Bank? asks Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
A consortium of Indian banks led by the State Bank of India (SBI) on Tuesday moved a step closer in their attempt to recover debt from loans paid out to Vijay Mallya's now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines after the high court in London upheld an application to amend their bankruptcy petition, in favour of waiving their security over the embattled businessman's assets in India. Chief Insolvencies and Companies Court (ICC) Judge Michael Briggs handed down his judgment in favour of the banks to declare there is no public policy that prevents a waiver of security rights, as argued by Mallya's lawyers. At a virtual hearing, July 26 was set as the date for final arguments for and against granting a bankruptcy order against the 65-year-old Mallya after the banks accused him of trying to "kick matters into the long grass" and called on the "bankruptcy petition to be brought to its inevitable end".
Ajit Mishra, vice president, Research, Religare Broking, answers your queries.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, research, Religare Broking, answers your queries.
With the banking regulator lifting restrictions on HDFC Bank's digital initiatives, the largest private sector lender is now girding up to launch a clutch of customer-facing applications (apps), which will act as stepping stones in its journey to morph into a technology (tech)-led bank from a conventional one. Following repeated outages in its digital offerings, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had barred HDFC Bank from issuing new credit cards in December 2020 and prevented it from going ahead with its digital launches. The embargo on issuing credit cards was lifted in August 2021 and the ban on digital launches was lifted last week.
Shifting to floating rate deposits can work as an anaesthetic gel for some customers, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
As per the mega consolidation plan, Oriental Bank of Commerce and United Bank of India will merge into Punjab National Bank (PNB); Syndicate Bank into Canara Bank; Andhra Bank and Corporation Bank into Union Bank of India; and Allahabad Bank into Indian Bank. Following this merger, PNB will become second largest after the SBI, Canara Bank fourth, Union Bank of India fifth and Indian Bank seventh biggest public sector lender.
As stringent sanctions imposed by the European Union and US are crippling business and trade, desperate Russian oil companies are offering huge discounts to India, provided a payment mechanism to bypass the SWIFT ban is quickly approved by the government. According to sources familiar with the development, Russian oil firms are offering 25-27 per cent discount to the dated Brent crude prices. State-run Rosneft is one the biggest oil companies that supply crude to India.
Embattled businessman Vijay Mallya on Tuesday lost a legal battle to hold on to his plush London home after a British court refused to grant him a stay of enforcement in a long-running dispute with Swiss bank UBS. The 18/19 Cornwall Terrace luxury apartment overlooking Regent's Park in London, described in court as an "extraordinarily valuable property worth many tens of millions of pounds", is currently being occupied by Mallya's 95-year-old mother Lalitha. Delivering his judgment virtually for the Chancery Division of the High Court, Deputy Master Matthew Marsh concluded there were no grounds for him to grant further time for the Mallya family to repay a 20.4-million loan to UBS - the claimant in the case.
Despite a significant improvement in asset quality, the country's banking industry might see its bad assets inching up in the months ahead, particularly in retail segment, global rating agency Fitch said.Rising bad loan assets had prompted many banks to sell their sticky assets to asset reconstruction companies, in order to transfer the risk and clean up their balance sheets.
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