Rupee higher
Mumbai: The rupee rose against the greenback in tandem with other major currencies on Tuesday and closed the day at 45.04, up from Monday's 45.08/09.

Forwards: In the forward premia market, the 6-month closed at 1.07 per cent (1.1) and the 12-month at 0.85 per cent (1.17).

G-Ses: The 8.07-12-year 2017 paper ended at Rs106.69 (7.18 per cent YTM), lower than Monday's close at Rs106.74 (7.17 per cent YTM) The 10.25-16-year 2021 paper closed at Rs126.67 (7.33 per cent YTM), higher than Monday's 126.58 (7.34 per cent YTM).

Call rates: The call rate closed 5.5/5.6 per cent (6.25) but touched 6 per cent during the day.

Reverse Repo: In the first one-day reverse repo auction, RBI received one bid for Rs500 crore and there were no bids in the repo auction. In the second one-day reverse-repo auction, RBI received six bids for Rs1,440 crore and one bid for Rs50 crore.

CBLO: In the CBLO market, there were 475 trades for Rs21,142.25 crore in the range of 5.15-6 per cent.
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ATM pricing issue to be addressed
Mumbai: National Financial Switch (NFS) sponsored by RBI, has formed a steering group of four member banks to decide on the ATM transaction charge per usage.

This is after ICICI Bank threatened to withdraw from NFS on the issue of charge per transaction for use of an ATM of one bank by the customer of another.

ICICI Bank had withdrawn its highly-used 40 ATMs in Mumbai from the NFS platform after IDRBT announced a sharp cut in ATM charge to Rs 9 per transaction from Rs 20 with effect from October 1, 2005. ICICI Bank is currently the only bank with a large ATM network participating in the NFS.

State Bank of India and UTI Bank, the other banks with large ATM networks, are not yet members of NFS. The official said the formation of a user group and a steering group would broadbase the management of NFS and help increase participation from more banks and volumes.
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ING Investment into portfolio management
Mumbai: ING Investment Management (I) Pvt Ltd is entering the portfolio management services (PMS) business through its ING Investment Management India (IIM), which invests for ING Vysya Mutual Fund. The company is hoping to manage Rs100 crore of funds in the first year from retail clients alone for the PMS business.

Company officials said ING IIM will provide investment advice as well as management services to HNIs and corporates while keeping pace with a constantly changing investment horizon. Any investor with investing corpus of a minimum of Rs25 lakh can avail the Single Manager-PMS.

Officials said portfolios will be managed on certain model portfolios, designed by the company specifically in accordance with the needs, objectives and investment constraints of the investor.

Currently, the corpus of retail HNIs segment is estimated at Rs7,725 crore.
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Greek bank selects Flexcube
Bangalore: I-Flex solutions said that the second largest bank in Greece, Alpha Bank has selected its core banking solution Flexcube for consumer lending operations and loan syndication.

Alpha Bank has more than 450 branches across Greece, the Balkans and Western Europe.

Alpha Bank will be deploying Flexcube in multiple phases across 450 branches, said an i-flex press release. However, i-flex did not disclose the deal size.

The deployment of Flexcube will allow Alpha Bank to launch new products faster and enhance its flexibility in addressing customers' needs.
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Reliance General gets approval for 17 branches
Mumbai: Reliance General Insurance has received IRDA's nod to set up 17 branches in various cities across the country. Currently, the company has 15 offices.

Apart from opening four new branches in Mumbai and three in Delhi, the company will also spread its network to Nashik, Nagpur, Kolhapur, Solapur, Indore, Rajkot, Coimbatore, Chennai, Hubli, Vizag, Kochi, Gurgaon, Noida, Kanpur, Kolkata and Bhubaneshwar.

The company currently offers 75 insurance products and has plans to introduce new value added products in segments such as travel, health, home, rural, commercial and liability.
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Bank of Baroda to revamp subsidiaries
Mumbai: Bank of Baroda (BOB) is currently restructuring its subsidiaries by infusing fresh capital and providing new competencies and is treating the process on a priority basis.

The bank had earlier announced plans to merge BOB Housing Finance Ltd with itself. At present, the National Housing Bank has stake of 33 per cent in this housing finance arm. BOB would buy this holding before the merger process is completed. The bank will now restructure other subsidiaries such as BOB Capital Markets, BOBCARDS and BOB Asset Management Company.

Company officials said the idea behind these subsidiaries is to focus on activities, which are not part of the bank's core functions.

Bank of Baroda has already infused Rs80 crore in BOBCARDS and is examining the need for the same in the other subsidiaries.

For the year 2004-2005 the company had a net profit of Rs4.5 crore against Rs4.3 crore in 2003-04.
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RBI has US$1bn pending in foreign realty plans
Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is said to be going slow on applications for foreign venture capital investment (FVCI) in real estate, as it is worried that a rapid rise in overseas inflows could send already red-hot property prices out of control.

RBI is said to be reluctant to clear at least 12-14 applications with an investment potential of US$500mn-$1bn. These applications are from both foreign funds and domestic firms wanting to raise overseas money for local investment. They have applied to Sebi to be registered for FVCI.
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