document.writeln("
Bank
of India picks up stake in broking firm
Mumbai: The Bank
of India has decided to invest Rs5 crore in the equity
of the Mumbai-based broking firm, Asit C. Mehta Investment
Intermediaries Ltd and will acquire 5-10 per cent stake
in the firm, it has informed the BSE on Tuesday.
The broking firm offers services such as online trading
in shares, spot financing, lending against demat shares,
and IPO financing. The tie-up will now enable the bank
to offer these products.
The bank has also approved the acquisition of 10 lakh
equity shares of UTI Infrastructure and Services Ltd,
a wholly owned company of the Specified Undertaking of
UTI, at a cost of Rs1 crore.
In the meanwhile, the bank has also announced the launch
of the inward remittance service jointly with the Bank
of New York, called `Star-e-Remit'.
As per the tie-up, remitters in the US can send money
to India after registering at the Bank of India Web site.
The money will be remitted to the recipient in India within
72 hours. If the recipient is not an account holder with
Bank of India, the amount will be remitted through mail
transfer or demand draft. A maximum of $5,000 can be remitted
at a time and up to three remittances can be done in a
month. The cost is a flat rate of $8 per remittance.
As of now, the service is available only in the US, but
the bank plans to extend it to the UK and West Asia soon,
officials said.
Bank of India sees an inward remittance of about $500
million from the US alone every year, and it is likely
to double with the launch of the service, officials said.
The bank's share in the inward remittance business is
about eight per cent.
To augment its Tier II capital, the bank is also planning
a bond issue to raise Rs300 crore and has also got approval
from shareholders to raise Tier I capital of Rs100 crore
through an equity offering.
The capital adequacy ratio currently stands about 11.53
per cent and the bank wants to maintain it at 12 per cent,
officials said.
International business amounts to about Rs 24,000 crore,
which accounts for 15 per cent of the operating profit,
said a bank official.
On the overseas expansion plans, Mr Balachandran said
that the bank has licences for expansion in China, Antwerp,
Vietnam, and Doha.
Back
to News Review index page
UTI
MF churns equity portfolio for quarter ended June
Mumbai:
The UTI
Mutual Fund (UTI MF) has offloaded shares worth over
Rs1,600 crore during the quarter ended June . The proceeds
were utilized to buy shares worth Rs1,300 crore in other
Sensex and mid-cap and small cap stocks.
In a major overhauling of its equity portfolio, the fund
house has sold its entire holding in 47 small and mid-cap
stocks worth Rs105 crore. The fund booked partial profits
in 125 small and medium cap stocks, striping 84 million
shares for Rs515 crore.
UTI sold around six million shares of Hindustan Lever,
over three million shares of Reliance Industries, over
a million shares each of ACC, Satyam Computer and SBI,
over five lakh shares of Gujarat Ambuja Cement, Infosys
Technologies, ITC and TCS.
The fund house also divested holdings in Essar Oil, Eskay
Knit, Hindustan Organic, Jindal Vijaynagar Steel, Jet
Airways, and Tata Elxsi. UTI MF increased its holding
in seven Sensex stocks, buying around 8.9 million shares
for Rs200 crore. The fund bought 44 lakh shares of NTPC,
28 lakh shares of Bharti Tele-Ventures; over four lakh
shares each of Tata Motors and HDFC, around 2.5 lakh shares
of HDFC Bank and around four lakh shares of ONGC.
The UTI MF added 56.5 million shares of small and mid-cap
stocks for Rs1,100 crore. The fund participated in public
issues buying shares of Shopper's Stop, Shringar Cinema,
Gokaldas Exports and Dwarikesh Sugar.
Despite heavy profit booking, buoyancy in stock prices
saw the corpus under management increase by around Rs1,300
crore to Rs21,840 crore. The pharmaceuticals sector tops
the fund's investment chart, followed by InfoTech, banks,
refineries, capital goods, petrochemicals and cement.
Back
to News Review index page
