Rupee steady
Mumbai: The rupee was steady against the US dollar on Thursday. The Indian currency opened at 44.51/53 and fell to 44.59 on dollar buying. It later recovered with the recovery of the stock markets to end at 44.48.

Forwards: Forward premia saw a steady decline in tune with the trends in the bond market and the cancellation of the Government auction. The six-month premium closed at 2.5 per cent (2.67 per cent) and the one-year closed at 1.97 per cent
(2.15 per cent).

Bonds: The bond market continued to gain on Thursday. The net gain in bond prices at the end of trade was about 20 paise.

G-Secs: The 8.07 11-year 2017 paper opened at Rs104.9 (7.4 per cent YTM), touched a high of Rs105.08 and closed at Rs105.04 (7.38 per cent YTM), against the previous day's close of 7.4 per cent YTM. The other actively traded paper was the 9.39 5-year 2011 paper. It opened at Rs109.43 (7.22 per cent YTM), touched a high of Rs109.55 and closed at Rs109.45 (7.21 per cent YTM).

Call rates: Call rates were steady on Thursday. Dealer said the RBI was gradually decreasing monetary injections into the system.

Repo auction: In the first one-day auction under the LAF, RBI did not receive any bids for reverse repo, but it received and accepted 14 bids for Rs5,690 crore in the repo auction. In the second auction, RBI received and accepted two bids for Rs50 crore in reverse repo and five bids for Rs760 crore in the repo auction.

CBLO: In the CBLO market, there were 307 trades for Rs2,18,266.5 crore in the rate range of 6.39-6.5 per cent.
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Actuaries needed in insurance sector
Mumbai: Banking industry experts say that with the insurance industry opening up, there would be a shortage of at least 100-150 actuaries. Currently, the country has just 50 certified actuaries and only two persons qualify as actuaries every year making it likely that the shortage would stay for a while.

Dr R Kannan, President, Actuarial Society of India (ASI), said that the country needs at least 100-150 actuaries. He added that KPOs (knowledge processing outsourcing), reinsurers and consulting firms were also hiring actuarial students.

The implementation of the Basell II norms would also mean that actuaries would be required for valuations of contingent liabilities and operational risk, he added.
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RBI approves Centurion Bank's preferential issue
New Delhi: Centurion Bank of Punjab has received approval from the Reserve Bank of India for preferential issue of 12.9 crore shares at Rs19.25 each to Citigroup Venture Capital International Growth Partnership Mauritius Ltd and India Value Fund. The bank will issue 7 crore equity shares to India Value Fund, managed by India Value Fund Advisors (formerly GW Capital).

Another 5.90 crore equity shares will be issued to Citigroup Venture Capital International Growth Partnership Mauritius.

The RBI recently approved the merger between Centurion Bank and Bank of Punjab. The merged entity, named Centurion Bank of Punjab, has a strong nationwide franchise of 241 branches and 389 ATMs in 122 cities.
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Reliance Life Insurance to open 44 new branches
Mumbai: Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group company, Reliance Life Insurance, has received regulatory approval to open 44 new branches in the country.

The branch expansion comes after the recent announcement by ADA Group chief Anil Ambani to infuse 1,000 crore equity capital in the life insurance venture in next 2-3 years to step up insurance operations across the country. The branch network of the company will go up to 162 after the addition of the new offices for which it has already received approval of Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority.

Reliance Capital acquired AMP Sanmar from Australian insurer AMP and the Sanmar group in October 2005 for a little over Rs100 crore and renamed it as Reliance Life Insurance.
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