Tides of 29.03.2007

1. HDFC Bank is set to push sales of retail gold products through at least 100 new outlets in 2007/08. It sells gold coins and bars ranging from 2.5 grams to 50 grams across more than 500 branches spread in the country and plans to widen the variety.

2. Finance Minister P Chidambaram said that RBI should take steps necessary to moderate inflation without affecting growth.

3. The Malaysian subsidiary of Dutch investment bank ABN Amro may launch an Islamic banking unit in Kuala Lumper as it expands its Ilamic finance business. The bank will create the subsidiary when its Islamic banking business is ‘big enough’.

4. Private sector lender IndusInd Bank Ltd is looking for a foreign partner to set up a capital market subsidiary to offer wealth management services to Indians living abroad. The bank also plans to set up an insurance broking venture and an offshore banking unit (OBU), besides taking a 20-30% stake in an asset reconstruction company.

5. Yahoo Inc plans to offer unlimited e-mail storage to its roughly quarter of a billion users, starting in May. The world's biggest e-mail service is scrapping its free e-mail storage limit of 1 gigabyte, or about a bn bytes of data, responding to explosive growth in attachment sizes as people share ever more photos, music and videos via e-mail. Microsoft has a 2 gigabyte free e-mail storage limit, while Google caps its Gmail service at 2.8 gigabytes.

6. Global financial firms in fast-growing but restrictive India are making small investments and growing organically in the hope of some bigger action when foreign ownership limits are reviewed in 2009. From banks and brokers to insurers, fund managers and exchange operators, foreign firms want some of the business that boosted the profits of banks like Citigroup and Standard Chartered in India by between 18% and 30% in 2005/06.

7. Citigroup Inc executives are putting the finishing touches to a restructuring plan that is likely to involve around 15,000 job cuts and a charge against earnings of more than $1 bn. The financial company expects to unveil the plan by the time it reports its first-quarter results on April 16, the day before Citigroup's annual meeting.

8. India would remain the largest recipient of the Japanese ODA assistance for the fourth consecutive year in 2007, promoting economic and social development as well as cementing Japan-India Strategic and Global Partnership. India is one of the most important countries of Japan's economic cooperation programme.

9. Encouraged by the huge opportunities offered by the booming Indian market, UAE banks are looking at Asia's second-fastest growing economy for expansion. Armed with huge surplus liquidity, the UAE banks, who are facing profitability crunch in their home market, are looking for growth prospects elsewhere.A country of 4 million people, the UAE, say some analysts, is overbanked with 47 banks.

10. ABN Amro Bank has acquired 2 mn shares or a 0.91 % stake in India Cements to raise its stake to 5.09%.

11. Observing that terrorists primarily use hawala channels to route their funds, government has said even the banking channels were a 'significant route' for movement of money by these elements. As per available reports, terrorists and terrorist organisations active in India are using different channels to fund their operations. They route their funds mainly through hawala and other informal means. Banking channels are also a significant route for movement of funds by such elements. The government was pursuing a multi-dimensional approach to deal with terrorist operations and supporting states to neutralise their activities.

12. Indonesia, for the first time, will host the Asian Bankers Summit established eight years ago. The event would be held at Shangri-La hotel here from March 25 to 28, where the world bankers would present an ‘Outlook’ on the industrial finance services in the country. The growth prospect of industrial finance services in Indonesia is above the average regional growth of 17 countries.