Indian Bank to revamp Indbank Merchant
Chennai: After mulling over its closure, Indian Bank has decided to revamp subsidiary company, Indbank Merchant Banking Services

There are two reasons for this. Firstly Indbank's balance sheet is looking healthier by the buoyancy in the share prices of Punj Lloyd. Indbank has 5.4 lakh shares of the company, acquired at a cost of Rs92.5 a share. On Friday, Punj Lloyd closed at Rs1,144 on the National Stock Exchange. At this price, the value of Indbank's holding works out to over Rs60 crore.

Second, Indian Bank is likely to get a licence for offering Depository Participant (DP) services. With the DP facility in the parent bank, Indbank's stock broking and merchant banking activities could be strengthened and with stock markets booming broking services would fetch good business, sources said.

Indian Bank also has a pan-India presence and Indbank Merchant can ride piggyback on the parent bank's branch network. Not much investment is required to restart the operations of the subsidiary.

In the first three quarters of the current year, Indbank made a net profit of Rs69.70 lakh compared with Rs2.45 crore in the same period last year. However, in the final quarter of last year, the company made a net loss and reported a net profit of Rs1.5 crore for the full year 2004-05.
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LIC rakes in big money from equity, debt, investments
Mumbai: Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has raked in about Rs3,700 crore from investment operations, equity and debt markets, till date in the current financial year and expects to make a total gain of Rs5,000 crore by end of March 2006.

At present, the market value of its equity portfolio is Rs84,000 crore, while book value is at Rs38,000 crore. LIC's asset base is expected to touch Rs500,000 crore by the end of March 2006, according to LIC chairman A K Shukla.

Shukla said LIC has posted 24 per cent growth in business from new policies and had sold 1.82 crore policies till end of January 2006. The first premium income grew by 73 per cent at Rs10,995 crore, he said.
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