24 July 2000
Citibank offers stocks to employees
Mumbai: Under a program recently cleared by the Reserve Bank of India, Citibank Indiais offering options to its Indian employees allowing them to hold shares of Citigroup at a pre-determined price.
Under the proposal, Citibank employees who wish to avail of this option, will undergo a monthly deduction from their salary for a period of two years. At the end of the term the amount accumulated could be used to obtain shares based on the price prevailing as on August 1, 2000. The monthly deduction scheme has been structured to ensure that employees availing the option are not required to cough up the cash upfront. In the course of two years an employee will have the option to step out of the arrangement.
The maximum number of shares that can be held by an employee will depend on the salary and central bank regulations.
The present programme is distinct from the employees stock option scheme and would cover close to 1.5 lakh employees across the globe.
Stanchart to begin integration with Grindlays
Mumbai: Having got the approval from the Reserve Bank of India, Standard Chartered Bank (Stanchart) is said to be initiating its process of integration with Grindlays Bank, which it recently acquired for $1.34 billion from the ANZ group.
Under the governance plan, where Stanchart will initiate operations at Grindlays under the Standard Chartered Grindlays name, two chief executives are envisaged during the two-year integration period. However, according to sources, the RBI has asked Stanchart to seek information from the Financial Supervisory Authority UK, for the integration in India.
FSA is the supervisory arm which broke off from Bank of England. The move is understood to be in line with RBI's understanding with Bank of England that the latter would not take any unilateral decision on any Indian bank with UK operations without consulting the RBI.
Under the limited clearance that has been agreed to in-principle, the central bank has said that Stanchart will be required to take its approval for all major decisions as the integration between the two entities is carried out.
Nasscom takes the initiative to create banking strategy forum
New Delhi : India's apex software body, National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), has taken the initiative to create a high power forum of banking and IT experts in the country to create a suitable action plan for a coordinated IT implementation strategy in Indian banks.
According to Nasscom, since Indian banks are facing new challenges in the form of increased competition within the industry, lower entry barriers for new players, presence of alternative forms of financial intermediation, the ever-increasing demand for skilled people and finally customers who are demanding better services and products, there is an urgent need for such a forum.
According to Mr .Dewang Mehta, president of Nasscom, India has the possibility of leap frogging in banking technology and moving from the traditional ledger based banking to total e-banking.
Further, the issue of computerisation becomes increasingly important, since only 14,000 of the 45,000 odd branches of the nationalised bank network, are computerised.
According to a paper prepared by Nasscom on Information Technology @ Banks in India, Internet banking is emerging as a strong and revolutionary alternate service delivery channel and corporate and wholesale clients were provided customer activated terminals and various remote services.
