Rupee marginally higher
Mumbai: The rupee ended marginally higher against the dollar on Monday along with an appreciation of the euro against the dollar. The domestic currency ended at 44.22/23, a bit higher than Friday's close at 44.24.

Forwards: In the forward premia market, the 6-month closed at 1.82 per cent (1.86) and the 12-month was unchanged at 1.37 per cent.

G-Ses: The 10.25 per cent -15 year-2021 paper closed at Rs126.505 (7.34 per cent YTM). The 8.07 per cent -11 year-2017 paper ended at the same level. This was lower than Friday's close at Rs106.495 (7.20 per cent YTM).

Call rates: The call rate closed at 7.40 per cent (6.75-7) and touched an intra-day high of 7.70 per cent.

Repo auction: In the first one-day reverse-repo, RBI received two bids for Rs45 crore and 32 bids for Rs16,625 crore in the repo auction. In the second one-day reverse-repo auction, RBI received four bids for Rs810 crore and 17 bids for Rs6,530 crore in the repo auction.

CBLO: In the CBLO market, there were 297 trades for Rs11,813.5 crore in the rate range of 6.10-6.39 per cent. (6.05-6.40).
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IndusInd Bank net down 36 per cent
Mumbai: IndusInd Bank recorded a 36-per cent dip in net profit at Rs27.37 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2005, against Rs42.85 crore for the corresponding period last year.

Bhaskar Ghosh, managing director of the bank said the fall in operating profit was due to the aggressive expansion of the branch network. For the third quarter 2005-06, IndusInd Bank's total income increased to Rs352.18 crore (Rs317.6 crore). Net interest income fell to Rs73.92 crore (Rs101.18 crore). Other income increased to Rs55.98 (Rs46.69 crore). Total expenditure increased to Rs307.68 crore (Rs230.54 crore).

Operating profit fell to Rs44.5 crore (Rs87.06 crore). Advances increased 25 per cent to Rs9,196 crore (Rs7,374 crore). Deposits, too, rose 25 per cent to Rs13,780 crore (Rs11,023 crore).
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BoB subscribed 0.61 times; Andhra Bank 0.56 times
Mumbai: Bank of Baroda's and Andhra Bank's follow-on public issues were subscribed 0.61 times and 0.56 times respectively. The issues, which opened today received 4.3 crore bids and 4.7 crore bids respectively, according to the NSE Web site.

Bank of Baroda is issuing 7.1 crore shares for its follow-on public issue, for which it received 32.64 lakh bids at the cut off price. The price band was fixed between Rs210 and Rs230 and the minimum bid lot size for the issue is 30 shares.

Andhra Bank's public issue of 8.5 crore equity shares received 1.84 crore bids at the cut off price. The bank had fixed the price band at Rs82-Rs 90, with a minimum bid size of 75 shares.
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Retail lending likely to go up: Purwar
Mumbai: Retail lending rates, including housing loans, are likely to rise in the short term because of the pressure on liquidity, according to A.K. Purwar, chairman, State Bank of India. He added that it was for individual banks to take the decision on hiking rates.

The pressure on liquidity is due to the recent redemption of India Millennium Deposits and the growing credit demand in the busy season, he said. Several banks are also raising equity capital. Many banks, including SBI, have already raised their domestic term deposit rates. SBI raised the deposit rates earlier this month by 25-50 basis points.

HDFC Bank, Dena Bank, Union Bank of India, Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Bank of Rajasthan had raised lending rates in November.
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Centurion Bank of Punjab to launch credit cards; offers e-broking with ILFS
Mumbai: Centurion Bank of Punjab plans to launch a credit card facility in the next couple of months. The bank has also tied up with IL&FS Investsmart to offer an e-broking facility.

The bank's country head-retail banking Vivek Vig said, "We would come out with the offering of credit cards before the end of this fiscal." He said the bank would soon launch credit cards which can be in the form of a joint venture or through outsourcing the bank's processing or through a 'White Label'."

The bank posted a net profit of Rs23.27 crore, up by 227.7 per cent for the quarter ended December 31, 2005 and plans to launch an IPO in the next couple of months. Its capital adequacy ratio is 10.2 per cent.
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RBI wants greater operational freedom for PSBs
Mumbai: A Reserve Bank of India (RBI) working group committee in a report tilted "Conflict of Interest in the financial sector," said the government should give more operational freedom to state-run banks and financial institutions (FIs).

The committee said the government should transfer the actual governance function from finance ministry to boards and agencies such as trusts and special purpose vehicles (SPVs). The process for appointing directors on public sector banks and institutions should be streamlined and professionalised and their compensation and remuneration package should be revamped, the report said.

The report also said the accountability chain was very weak in public sector units and blamed the multiple agencies that worked in the sector bringing in inherent conflict of roles of the government as regulator, owner, adjudicator and executive.

It said, "There is a virtual stranglehold by a multitude of agencies of the government, its officials, planning commission, comptroller and auditor general, Central Bureau of Investigation, Central Vigilance Commission over the working of the public sector enterprises (PSEs)."

The central bank had constituted a working group, under the chairmanship of D M Satwalekar, managing director of HDFC Standard Life Insurance, to identify sources and nature of potential conflicts of interest in the financial sector in India and possible measures/actions to mitigate them.
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