Charminar Bank begins repayment of deposits
Hyderabad: With the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC) expressing its willingness to release an amount of Rs 161 crore in two phases to the depositors of Charminar Bank, the city-based ailing urban cooperative bank, under the deposit insurance scheme, has started repayment to its depositors from Monday. According to the bank officials, DICGC has given Rs 75 crore under phase I last Friday with an assurance that the rest would be released soon. Following this, the bank announced that it would repay depositors' money from Monday till Wednesday.
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RBI issues norms on UCB deposits
Mumbai: Scheduled urban co-operative banks (UCBs) must satisfy certain conditions if they want to accept deposits from non-scheduled UCBs, according to a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) circular issued on Monday. The apex bank has stipulated conditions for scheduled UCBs for accepting deposits from non-scheduled UCBs. The circular said that strong scheduled UCBs with NPA levels of less than seven per cent and those, which have been complying, with the prescribed level of CRAR can accept deposits provided they satisfy other conditions.
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IDBI Bank clears 1:2 rights issue
Mumbai: The board of directors of IDBI Bank on Monday approved a rights issue of equity shares in the ratio of one equity share for every two shares held at a price of Rs 22 per share. IDBI Bank share closed at Rs 25.45 on the BSE on Monday, up from Friday's close of Rs 25.25. The bank hopes to raise a capital of Rs 150 though the rights issue. The bank which has been unable to raise capital for various reasons in the past few months, finally decided to go for a rights issue last week, thereby putting all other capital-raising plans on the backburner.
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IOB posts 80-pc rise in net; to pay Rs 1.6
Chennai: Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) has posted a net profit of Rs 416.10 crore for the 2002-03 fiscal, up from Rs 230.21 crore for the previous year. The board of directors has recommended a dividend of Rs 1.6 per share (16 per cent), up from Rs 1.2 paid in the previous year. The bank's operating profit for the year was Rs 794.13 crore, against Rs 616.36 crore in the previous year. (This includes interest on recapitalisation bonds of about Rs 100 crore.) The chairman and managing director, S.C. Gupta, said that the profits of the bank came mainly from operations rather than from treasury. Net interest margin increased from 2.53 per cent as of March 2000 to 3.14 per cent in March 2003.
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OBC declares a dividend of 45 per cent
New Delhi: Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC) has recorded a net profit of Rs 457 crore for the financial year ended March 31, 2003, a 43.5 per cent growth over the previous year net of Rs 320 crore. The gross profit for the year stood at Rs 1,163 crore, 26.82 per cent higher than the previous year's Rs 917 crore. For the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2003, the net profit was Rs 119.49 crore, a jump of 87.28 per cent over Rs 63.80 crore in the last quarter of the previous fiscal. Addressing a press conference here on Monday , the chairman and managing director, OBC, B.D. Narang, said the bank declared a dividend of 45 per cent for the fiscal, against 35 per cent in the previous year.
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PSBs to bear burden of Maharashtra credit plan
Pune: The burden of implementing the annual credit plan in Maharashtra will fall on the public sector banks (PSBs) because of the difficult financial condition of the district central cooperative banks (DCCBs). Anandrao Adsul, minister of state for finance (expenditure, banking and insurance), indicated that there were plans to shift some of the credit plan from the cooperatives to the PSU banks. He said this while announcing the state’s annual credit plan for 2003-04 at the State Level Bankers’ Committee meeting convened by Bank of Maharahstra here on Monday. The district central cooperative bank is the major purveyor of short term credit to agriculture and other priority sectors in Maharashtra contributing about 55 per cent of the credit plan. But their poor financial conditions of 13 DCCBs and the restrictions imposed on them for borrowing from refinancing agencies could impact flow of credit and size of the credit plan so the public sector banks would be asked to chip in. The total outlay for 2003-04 for the state is Rs 11,485 crore. Adsul said the public sector banks could easily shoulder this responsibility.
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Birla Sun plans to expand capital base
New Delhi: Birla Sun Life Insurance will ‘very soon’ be investing another Rs 20 crore to raise its capital base to Rs 200 crore, with possible further infusion of capital later in the year as well. It has set its sights on a target of 1.8 lakh policies with an annualised premium of Rs 450 crore in the current year. The company has clocked an annualised premium collection of Rs 170 crore and a net premium income of Rs 139.89 crore in 2002-03, its second year of operations. The corresponding figures for the previous year were Rs 36 crore and Rs 26.79 crore. The average premium per policy also rose sharply to Rs 19,000 from Rs 16,000 the previous year, and the average sum assured stood at Rs 3.56 lakh. It sold 65,000 individual life policies and covered 40,000 lives through its group insurance covers during the last fiscal, associate director, marketing and communication Anjana Grewal said.
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UCO Bank net rises 25 pc
Kolkata: In its Diamond Jubilee year (2002-03), UCO Bank has posted 25.45 per cent growth in the net profit at Rs 207 crore.
For the first time, the board of directors of the bank, at a meeting here on Monday, decided to pay a token dividend of Rs 1 crore to the Government. V.P. Shetty, chairman and managing director of UCO, while briefing newspersons about the bank's performance in 2002-03, however, said the income from treasury operations at Rs 354 crore was more or less at last year's level. The net interest income at Rs 882 crore posted a growth of Rs 152 crore.
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GTB ties up with Baazee.com
Hyderabad: Global Trust Bank (GTB), the Hyderabad-based private sector bank, has tied-up with Baazee.com for providing e-payment facility to its customers for online shopping. Baazee.com is the country's largest online auction and fixed price shopping site where one can buy or sell anything. In a press release here on Monday, GTB said its customers registered for Internet banking facility could now make payments on Baazee online store through ibank@gtb. The bank has adopted the latest technology to provide a secure and reliable e-payment facility with digital certificate and 128-bit encryption.
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Rabo India Fin to focus more on infrastructure
Mumbai: Rabo India Finance, a 100 per cent subsidiary of the Netherlands-based Rabobank International, is to have higher focus on the infrastructure sector. "About 60-70 per cent of our incremental growth is to come from infrastructure this year, both advisory services and funding. Our focus areas are primarily agriculture infrastructure, sustainable infrastructure and contiguous infrastructure,'' said Somak Ghosh, director, project advisory & infrastructure management, Rabo India Finance. The business mix will certainly see a change in the running year. The NBFC is to recruit 25-odd personnel, which will take the staff strength to 110 from the present 85. Most of the fresh recruitments are expected to be for the infrastructure segment, senior officials in Rabo India Finance said.
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UBI sheds `weak' tag; PAT at Rs 305 cr
Kolkata: United Bank of India has recorded a post-tax profit of Rs 305 crore for the year ended March 31, 2003, an increase of more than 250 per cent over the previous fiscal. An overwhelming part of the profit is on account of the bank's treasury operations.
UBI clocked an operating profit of Rs 556 crore for 2002-03, up from Rs 237 crore posted in the previous year. Its net interest income for the period under review stood at Rs 719 crore, up from Rs 602 crore. The bank had a capital adequacy ratio of 15.17 per cent as on March 31, 2003, while the return on assets stood at 1.37 per cent as on that date. Its business per employee was Rs 1.62 crore, up from Rs 1.44 crore in 2001-02.
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