ICICI Bank to launch FPO in third week of June
Mumbai: ICICI Bank's Rs10,000-11,000 crore follow-on public issue is expected open in the third week of this month when the bank would receive approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India's (Sebi).

Market speculation on the price band of the offer, puts the figure between Rs 900-960 per share.
Back to News Review index page  

RBI employees oppose outsourcing work
Bhubaneshwar: The All India Reserve Bank Employees Association (AIRBEA) has laid the following demands: It wants that RBI should stop outsourcing its work as this involves the security of the nation; take suitable measures for ensuring circulation of clean note; and start the recruitment at the clerical level, which have been frozen for more than a decade.

Samir Ghosh, general secretary, AIRBEA alleged that Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said even though currency management is one of the statutory responsibilities of the Reserve Bank of India, it is now virtually in shambles. He said the manual system has been abandoned while imported machines have miserably failed to cope with the situation. Notes are pilling up in RBI vaults and chest offices, choking the whole system of processing soil notes. To overcome the difficulty, RBI has decided to shred and destroy the soiled notes without proper scrutiny. Absence of a system of close scrutiny may encourage anti-national elements to circulate fake currency notes in the country, he said.

Ghosh said the decision of the RBI to give up the work of public debt management of states and the central government will put many weaker states under pressure. He added that the states will find it difficult to sell their bonds if they do not offer higher interest rate.
Back to News Review index page  

TimesofMoney to create personal finance supermall
Mumbai: TimesofMoney, a part of the Times Group, is planning to create a global financial supermall by providing a host of personal finance services such as retail broking, distribution of IPO forms and mutual funds, insurance products, payment of utility bills, credit card and personal loans.

For the distribution of mutual funds TimesofMoney has already signed up with 11 fund houses, including Birla Sun Life MF, Franklin Templeton, HDFC MF, HSBC, Prudential ICICI, Reliance Mutual Fund, SBI, UTI MF, Tata MF and Sundaram BNP Paribas MF.

According to officials the aim is to give a one-stop solution for all personal finance needs to global Indian customers by offering wide neutral choice of products and services from the best in class providers.

However, the distribution of IPOs and mutual funds is still in the beta stage. The services will be provided both offline and online. The company has started to market this service to NRIs (Gulf, the biggest market, and Singapore) and to domestic Indians some time ago.

Sources said that the brand under which all this services would be provided was yet to be finalised.
Back to News Review index page  

SBH offers 'Express Clearing'
Hyderabad: The State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH) has introduced 'Express Clearing' in order to facilitate faster credits at its 104 branches in Hyderabad and Secunderabad.

Bank officials said Express Clearance would provide higher comfort levels to the customers.

Officials said while the cheques drawn on any branch of SBH can be cleared on the same day, instruments drawn on other local banks would be cleared within one working day.

All 104 branches of the bank in the twin cities would have a drop box and another jumbo box would be kept at the service branch in Abids that would be cleared once in every half an hour for processing cheques and DDs. The offering would be extended to other parts of the State in a phased manner. On an average, the bank would clear over 20,000 cheques per day.
Back to News Review index page  

Chidambaram opposes cap on micro-credit rates
New Delhi: The finance ministry has opposed capping interest rates for small loans under the Micro Finance Bill and is opposed to the views of the Left parties and certain members of the Standing Committee of Parliament.

The Micro Finance Bill introduced in Parliament, is currently under consideration of the Standing Committee. According to the source, the finance ministry had brought to the notice of the Standing Committee that at a time when money lenders and commission agents were charging as much as 50-300 per cent interest, there should be any limit on interest rate for organized players like banks and financial institutions as this would discourage them to lend to micro-finance institutions. The FinMin said that more competition, the interest rate would come down, now in the range of 24-30 per cent.

According to estimates, there are over 800 micro-finance institutions operating in India in various forms — trusts, societies, cooperatives and non-banking finance companies.

The Bill, which was introduced by Finance Minister P Chidambaram, seeks to regulate small micro-credit institutions through the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), requiring them to meet stringent accounting standards.

However, the Bill does not contain any provision regarding ceiling on interest rates that could be charged from the borrowers.

Another official source said due to differences among the members of the Standing Committee and opposition from the Left parties, the Bill could not get Parliamentary approval during the Budget session.
Back to News Review index page  

New CPI to be out soon
Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is planning to bring a new consumer price index (CPI) as the present indices, both the CPI and the wholesale price index (WPI), have become less representative with the rising clout of services in the consumption basket.

YV Reddy governor of RBI said the goal is to anchor inflation expectations in India, so as to align them with the global levels as soon as possible, for ensuring smooth economic integration with the global economy, he said. There are occasions when the divergence between the WPI and the CPI is larger than usual. In view of these considerations, the central bank monitors and disseminates all the CPI indicators, he said.

The new index is expected to combine the characteristics of the present wholesale price index and the consumer price index, both for the urban and rural people, he said, adding that the index would help in calculating a more realistic figure for the weekly inflation data.
Back to News Review index page