Rupee firms up
Mumbai: The rupee gained against the dollar due to good dollar inflows into the domestic equity market. The rupee ended at 44.21, higher than Monday's close of 44.23/24.

Forwards: The forward premia eased for the second consecutive day. The six-month premium closed at 1.79 per cent (1.83 per cent) and the 12-month premium closed at 1.47 per cent (1.5 per cent).

G-secs: The 8.07 per cent 11-year 2017 paper ended trade at Rs105.32 (7.35 per cent YTM), against Monday's close of Rs105.53 (7.32 per cent YTM). The 9.39 per cent 5-year 2011 paper closed at Rs110.75 (6.96 per cent YTM).

Call rates: Call rates opened in the range of 7-7.25 per cent and closed at around 7.10 per cent (7-7.25 per cent).

Repo auction: In the first one-day auction, the RBI received one bid in the reverse repo for Rs100 crore and 16 bids for Rs3,315 crore in the repo. In the second one-day reverse repo auction, it received one bid for Rs70 crore and 12 bids for Rs2,215 crore in the repo auction.

CBLO: In the CBLO market, there were 288 trades for Rs16,347.75 crore in the 6.45-6.60 per cent.
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BoM increases coupon rate on Tier-II bonds
Mumbai: Bank of Maharashtra has increased the rate on its Tier-II bond issue, by 20 basis points from 7.5 per cent to 7.7 per cent in line with the increase in the reverse repo rate by 0.25 percentage points. This is the second tranche of bond issue with a maturity of seven years.

Last month, the bank raised Rs200 crore at the rate of 7.7 per cent and plans to raise Rs450 crore in all, including greenshoe option of Rs50 crore. The issue includes an option to retain over-subscription to the extent of Rs225 crore. The bank also extended the date of closure of the issue from February 4 to February 17.

The bank has no plans to increase its retail lending or deposit rates immediately.
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IOB ups NRE deposit rates
Chennai: Indian Overseas Bank has hikes NRE (non-resident external) term deposit rates by 10 basis points with effect from February 1. The revised rate is 5.70 per cent for deposits accepted for one year to less than five years.

IOB has foreign currency deposits of Rs5,300 crore. Most of them are mobilised from the bank's branches in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Singapore.
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IOB board fixes meet on Bharat Overseas buyout
Chennai: Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) is planning to buy out the stake held by six other banks in Bharat Overseas Bank and has called for a meeting of its board of directors on February 14 to consider the proposal.

IOB has a 30 per cent stake in Bharat Overseas Bank. The other stakeholders are: Bank of Rajasthan (16 per cent), Vysya Bank (14.66 per cent), Federal Bank (10.67 per cent), Karur Vysya Bank (10 per cent), South Indian Bank (10 per cent) and Karnataka Bank (8.67 per cent).

Banking industry sources say IOB is consolidating operations on the Finance Ministry's recommendation for a consolidation in the Indian banking industry. Earlier, Bharat Overseas Bank had proposed an initial public offering to help it raise funds for business expansion and also to help some of the stakeholders dilute their stake in the bank.

Bharat Overseas Bank was established in 1973 to take over IOB's Bangkok branch. It now has close to 95 branches in the country besides the branch in Bangkok.
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Allied Digital gets US$1mn contract from ICICI Bank
Mumbai: IT solutions company, Allied Digital Services has received a contract worth US$1mn from the ICICI Bank group to provide IT infrastructure and remote client management solutions to the bank.

Allied Digital chairman and managing director Nitin Shah said, "this is one of the biggest IT infrastructure remote client management deal in the country as the company will deploy over 45,000 systems across 1,100 locations for the bank".

The company will implement software and hardware inventory, end-to-end security, application inventory, remote managing and controlling among others for the bank.

The deployment, which had already begun, would be conducted across all ICICI group companies, including ICICI Lombard, ICICI Prudential, ICICI Securities and ICICI Bank, he said.

The project is slated to be completed by April 30, 2006.
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