ICICI Bank to focus more on origination of loans
Mumbai: ICICI Bank, the largest private sector bank in the country, will be playing a bigger role as `originator' of loans than as a lender in the corporate loan market. The bank is counting on its `strong origination capabilities' and relationships with corporates in facilitating such deals. In this arrangement, different from a consortium model, ICICI Bank, often with another lender, takes on the full loan exposure initially by acting as one-point contact for the client and later sells down the assets to a gamut of banks. Sometimes, ICICI Bank keeps some exposure to the client in its books and at other times, none at all.
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Mitsui Sumitomo upbeat on Indian foray
Chennai: The chairman and CEO of Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Company, Japan, Takeo Inokuchi, has said that the company has big expectations from the Indian market for non-life insurance. "We would (eventually) like to be Number 1 or Number 2 among the private sector players in India," Inokuchi said here on Wednesday. Inokuchi said that he understood from the executives of Cholamandalam MS General Insurance Company Ltd that the focus would be on retail business. Cholamandalam MS General is a joint venture of Mitsui Sumitomo and the Chennai-based Murugappa group. M.A. Alagappan, chairman, Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Ltd, said that when the group began to look at entering the non-life insurance sector, the market size was Rs 12,000 crore and in just two years it had grown to Rs 14,500 crore. He noted that the market was estimated to grow to Rs 45,000 crore by 2010.
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Manikanta Bank top brass arrested
Hyderabad: The chairman and two of the directors of Manikanta Bank, the city-based ailing urban cooperative bank, have been arrested by the Crimes and Special Investigation team of the Hyderabad Police on Wednesday . According to police, the Bank chairman, K. Siddaiah, and directors, Pammidi Laxman Rao and Cherukumilli Bhaskar Rao, were produced before the Metropolitan Court. The police have invoked the provisions of Andhra Pradesh Protection of Depositors of Financial Establishments Act-1999 against the top brass of Manikanta Bank.
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Andhra Bank plans to return Rs 50 cr more to Govt
Hyderabad: The board of directors of Andhra Bank is scheduled to meet here on Friday to consider and approve a proposal to return further capital of Rs 50 crore to the Central Government. The bank had returned Rs 50 crore during last fiscal out of share capital contributed earlier through the allotment of recapitalisation bonds. It also refunded Rs 11.91 crore to the Government out of the interest earned by the bank on recapitalisation bonds during the holding period after setting off the dividend paid pro rata on such returned capital amount
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Setting up rural branches — finance ministry, RBI get tough with new pvt banks
New Delhi: The Indian countryside could soon be dotted with scores of signboards of new branches set up by the nine new private sector banks. The ministry of finance and the Reserve Bank of India have decided to adopt a tough stand on the banks' reluctance to open branches in the rural and semi-urban areas as committed by them in their licensing agreements. Egged on by the finance ministry, the RBI recently sent a missive to the banks to fall in line with the licensing condition under which each of them are required to have at least 25 per cent of their branches in the rural and semi-urban areas.
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Potential for credit rating upgrade highest in healthcare, predicts S&P
New Delhi: The number of debt issuers recorded globally, whose credit rating is raised to investment (‘BBB-’ and above) from speculative grade (‘BB+’ and below) — termed ‘“rising stars” by Standard & Poor’s (S&P) — has been declining every year since its peak in 1997. For the present, though, the sectors that demonstrated the highest potential for rising stars were healthcare, media and entertainment and retail/restaurants, according to a report released on Tuesday by Standard & Poor’s Rating Services.

A rising tide of negative ratings momentum in the past few years has resulted in the number of rising stars recorded globally being outstripped by the number of fallen angels in each year since 1999.
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NCAER calls for holistic transition of agri sector
Bangalore: The National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) has called for a more holistic approach towards managing change and creating adjustment mechanisms to deal with the transition process in the Indian agriculture sector.
NCAER’s principal economist Anil Sharma in his presentation on “trade policy issues in Indian agriculture” at the World Bank’s ABCDE however hoped that liberalisation of agricultural trade would benefit Indian agriculture in view of levels of support and deregulation of domestic and external trade. Sharma cautioned that changes resulting from liberalisation would not be uniform and said that the process of trade liberalisation initially or in the short run may lead to a loss of livelihood for the insecure sections of the rural society as the process of resources reallocation takes place.
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ABCDE commences in Bangalore
Bangalore: The World Bank-sponsored three-day annual bank conference on development economics (ABCDE) commenced here on Wednesday with leading figures from the world of development economics deliberating on the strategies to trigger growth in the least developed countries as well as sustaining the momentum of growth in the developing world. The presentations on the inaugural day, shadowed by the nationwide strike called by left-wing trade unions protesting against what they called the Fund-Bank inspired economic reforms process, were far from the ‘one size fits all’ approach the critics often associated with World Bank. Back to News Review index page  

IFC raises India investment size to $350million this fiscal
Bangalore: Impressed with the surge in the Indian economy, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Washington, has raised its annual investments in India to $350 million for 2003-04 from the previous year’s $160 million. IFC is particularly impressed with the country’s manufacturing and housing finance sectors. It has expressed optimism of India becoming the second fastest growing economy after China, and decided to provide funds to manufacturing, housing finance, information technology and animation, infrastructure and agriculture sectors during the current fiscal and for the next decade.
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