Rupee rises against dollar
Mumbai: The rupee rose against the dollar due to the upswing in the domestic stock market and all round selling of dollars by corporates and inter-bank players. The rupee opened at 45.92/93 and strengthened through the day. It finally closed at 45.8350/8450, up from Thursday's 45.98.

Forwards: In the forward premia market, the 6 months ended at 0.94 per cent (0.89) and the 12 months closed at 1.10 per cent (1.07).

Bonds: In the bond market, prices fell in reaction to the higher than expected domestic inflation data. Inflation rose to 4.72 per cent during the week ended June 3, from the previous week's 4.68 per cent. Dealers said that the outlook for the bond market continued to be bearish ahead of the Rs5,000-crore g-sec auction next week.

The 9.39 per cent-5 year-2011 benchmark paper opened at Rs108.13 (7.42 per cent YTM) and closed at Rs108.07 (7.44 per cent YTM), lower than Thursday's Rs108.14. The 7.59 per cent-10 year-2016 benchmark paper opened at Rs98.61 (7.79 per cent YTM) and ended at Rs98.56 (7.80 per cent YTM), down from Thursday's close at Rs98.7 (7.78 per cent).

Call rates: Call rates remained the same between 5.75 and 5.85 per cent.

Reverse repo: In the first three-day reverse repo auction under LAF, the Reserve Bank of India received and accepted 24 bids amounting to Rs23,070 crore and in the second three-day reverse repo auction, 34 bids for Rs17,495 crore. There were no repo bids.

CBLO: The CBLO market saw 279 trades aggregating Rs14086.45 crore in the 5-5.9 per cent range.
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IDFC, SBI Caps sign agreement
Mumbai: Infrastructure Development Finance Company and SBI Capital Markets have entered into a memorandum of understanding for syndication of debt financing in the infrastructure and allied sectors. The debt financing will include project loans, corporate loans, issuance of bonds and debentures, subordinate dent and mezzanine debt.

The MoU will enable the companies to capitalise on their respective strengths to co-operate in syndication of debt financing for the infrastructure sector to enable efficient capital raising by infrastructure companies and quicker financial closure for large infrastructure projects.
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RBI raises auction amount
Mumbai: The RBI has increased the amount of Government securities auction to be held on June 22 from Rs5,000 crore to Rs9,000 crore. RBI announced the sale of the 7.37 per cent G-Sec 2014 for Rs500 crore through multiple price method and the 7.94 per cent G-Sec 2021 for Rs4,000 crore, through the uniform price method.

A primary dealer said that as the bond prices are higher than expected, they could open 10-20 paise lower on Monday. However, they may recover later.
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Indian Bank offers easy short term farm credit
Hyderabad: The Indian Bank has that it would provide short-term credit to farmers at an easier rate of seven per cent per annum. The bank said with this it would become the first bank to introduce this scheme in continuation of the Union Finance Minister's Budget Speech 2006-07 announcement and subsequently RBI's direction to ensure provision of short-term credit at seven per cent to farmers up to Rs 3 lakh.
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ABN-Amro to focus on private banking biz
Bangalore: ABN-Amro Bank said it would focus on growing its private banking business by at least 300 per cent over the next five years. Ms. Sutapa Banerjee the bank's vice-president and head, private banking, said currently the private banking operations had assets under management (AUM) of about $750 million (Rs3,445.3 crore) in the country. The bank would like to see the AUM rise to over $2 billion (Rs9,186.9 crore) over five years she said and the bank intends to look beyond the metros to class one cities. The bank is targeting cities like Hyderabad, Mysore, Pune and Baroda.

By the current financial year-end, the bank hoped to be in at least eight to nine cities in the country.

The bank will use the hub and spoke arrangement to reach out to customers, where the bank does not have branches she said.

The bank would also increase its staff strength to 100 to conform to its increase in high networth individuals (HNI).
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Kotak Life declares 7 pc return
Mumbai: Kotak Mahindra Old Mutual Life Insurance (Kotak Life Insurance) has declared a total return of seven per cent including a four per cent bonus on its participating contracts for the financial year ended March 2006. This is an increase of almost four per cent over the previous year's figure of 6.75 per cent.
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