1. SBI proposes to raise up to Rs 10,000 crs of debt in tranches during the current financial year. The bank will raise capital by way of unsecured and rated rupee innovative perpetual debt instruments, upper Tier II, lower Tier II subordinated debt by way of bonds and any other capital instrument permitted by RBI, said a BSE notice. The bank will also utilise the balance Rs 1,285 crore available out of the Rs 5,000 crore approved in 2006-07 for rais0ing upper and lower Tier II subordinated debt.
2. Bank of Baroda will set up a subsidiary in Malaysia in alliance with PNB and Andhra Bank, instead of the earlier joint venture partners, Bank of Maharashtra and Oriental Bank of Commerce. The necessary permissions for change of partners had been acquired from the RBI and an application would soon be filed with the Malaysian regulator for the proposed venture. The new subsidiary, which will be a 40:35:25 partnership between Bank of Baroda, PNB and Andhra Bank, will entail an investment of Rs 360 crs.
3. If you are looking to buy a second home or want a home loan of over Rs 20 lakh, get ready to pay more. Taking the cue from FM P Chidambaram’s directive to curb retail loans growth, including home loans, public sector banks are considering pricing home loans depending on the size of the loan or whether the property being purchased is for self use. Banks to also charge 50-100 bps more for Rs 20 lakh-plus loans.
4. Millions of banking customers who have not operated their lockers for more than a year will soon receive notices from their banks to either surrender their lockers or operate them at least once a year. The banks will issue notices to the locker hirers in pursuance of the recent Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines, which have empowered the banks to break open a locker in case it remains unoperated for one year.
5. Indian retail, with the coming in of conglomerates like Bharti Enterprises, Reliance and some foreign players, is set to generate business worth $430 billion by 2010, says a report by a leading industry lobby. The share of organised retail is estimated to go up to 20-22 percent to become a $90 billion industry while the unorganised sector is set to touch $340 billion in the next three years, according to the Federation of India Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). This exponential growth is expected to generate 18 million jobs, thereby becoming the second largest employment-generating sector after agriculture.
6. Corporate India seems to be in jitters as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) gears itself to formulate the annual monetary policy in the backdrop of rising inflation and interest rates, says a leading industry group. According to a survey by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM), CEOs, chairmen and managing directors, especially from sectors such as real estate, automobiles, housing finance, banking and financial services, are edgy over what anti-inflationary measures would RBI take to further tighten monetary inflow. As many as 60% of the Indian honchos feel that bankers and economists are not sure whether the RBI would be tempted further to resort to credit squeezing. Around 74% of CEOs feel that a tight monetary policy would affect the medium and small enterprises more than the large business houses.
