Infosys develops Islamic Banking Solution
New Delhi: Infosys is targeting the affluent Islamic Banking community, with its Islamic banking tool and already bagged a customer - Arab National Bank.

The company said it is developing full-fledged banking solution for them (that is) expected to be operational by the end of this year. The company is in talks with several Tier-I and II banks in Middle-East and South East Asia region and is hoping to bag few more orders soon.

The market size of Islamic Banking solution is over 300 billion dollars.

Infosys offucials said Islamic banking as a practice is quite different from conventional banking practise. There are fundamental differences in Islamic banking products and conventional banking products.

These include differences in accounting, income recognition, provisioning norms. The other key difference is that in Islamic banking, every product has to work on a profit sharing basis as charging of Interest is prohibited. This makes the whole Islamic banking compliance activity more complex and difficult to understand as compared to a common banking practice.
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Unions oppose SBI stake transfer to govt
Kolkata: The officer and staff unions of the State Bank of India (SBI), are planning to oppose the government's decision to acquire the Reserve Bank of India's 59.73 per cent stake in the bank and will be sending a joint letter to the government next week, outlining their reservations over the stake transfer and threatening an indefinite strike if their plea is ignored.

The government is to acquire Reserve Bank's stake in June 2007 in a cash-less transaction, as part of a move to separate the central bank's ownership and regulatory functions.

SBI has around 60,000 officials and 1.5 lakh clerical staff on its rolls. General Secretary G D Nadaf described the stake transfer as the government's "sinister" design to amend the SBI Act and subsequently dilute its stake in the bank.
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