PUBLIC SECTOR BANKS
No impact of merger plan on PNB rating: S&P
INTERNATIONAL Rating Agency Standard and Poor's has said that the recent announcement of the "in-principle" merger approval given by the boards of Punjab National Bank and Industrial Finance Corporation of India is not expected to have an ... More

`Indian banks turning more efficient'
THE Executive Director of Reserve Bank of India, Ms Shyamala Gopinath, has said there has been a discernible improvement in the efficiency of Indian banks since 1992. She was delivering the keynote address at the national seminar on "WTO and ... More

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS
The end of development finance
Recent months have seen a series of events that spells the end of the era of development banking in India. In this edition of Macroscan, C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh discuss why this was an inevitable fallout of the proce ss of financial liberalisation. More

INTEREST RATES
Bank union concern over low interest rates
THE salaried and middle class employees, pensioners and household savings people are the worst affected due to the steep drop in interest rates, the National Confederation of Bank Employees has said. At its fifth general council meeting in ... More

GOVT BONDS
Railways seeks SLR status for IRFC bonds
THE Ministry of Railways has sought statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) status for the bonds issued by its subsidiary, the Indian Railways Finance Corporation (IRFC), which borrows funds for the organisation from the open market. "The Ministry of ... More

CREDIT MARKET
Retail finance moving to Tier II cities
A major factor forcing many public sector banks to reposition themselves in the retail-loans market, by enhancing focus in the Tier-II cities, is that most of them have lost considerable market share in the metros to their private sector and foreign counterparts. More

INVESTOR GRIEVANCES
NRI investors' plea to RBI
A UAE non-resident Indian (NRI) welfare organisation has urged the RBI authorities to instruct the banks to issue consolidated inward remittance certificates (IRC) to companies to help NRI investors. Mr K.V. Shamsudheen, Chairman, Pravasi ... More

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
TMB issue: Pact signed for share transfer
REPRESENTATIVES of the Nadar community entered into an agreement on Monday with Mr C. Sivasankaran, Chairman of Sterling group, to buy 34 per cent of the equity of Tamilnad Mercantile Bank from him. Eight individuals of the Nadar community ... More

EVENTS
`Indian banks must become significant players abroad'
THE Chairman and Managing Director of Corporation Bank, Mr Cherian Varghese, has said that Indian banks have to break the limited contour of doing business with only ethnic Indian community abroad. They will have to become transnational banks ... More