The Hindu Business Line : Tuesday, November 18, 2008

MONEY & BANKING

CONSUMER FINANCE: PSU banks aim for aggressive passenger vehicle loan growth
Private banks scale down lending portfolio. Despite the economic slowdown, the major public sector banks expect loans for purchase of cars and other passenger vehicles to grow 20-25 per cent in the ...

FINANCIAL MARKETS: Govt looking at measures to sustain export growth
New Delhi, Nov. 17 The Government may come up with a slew of measures to sustain the current export growth on the back of apprehensions that the global economic slowdown may see India miss the export target of $200 billion set for the ...

GOVT BONDS: Banks preferring longer-dated papers
Average tenure of securities now at over 2.5 years. Bangalore, Nov. 17 Faced with burgeoning deposits, banks are beginning to stretch their investment portfolio to ...

FINANCIAL MARKETS: Infosys sticks to revenue guidance; looking for buyouts
New Delhi, Nov. 17 Infosys Technologies on Monday termed the current global environment as “difficult and challenging” but said it is sticking to its quarterly and FY09 revenue guidance for ...

HOUSING FINANCE: Slash of risk weights to have limited impact
Demand holds key to real estate recovery. The Reserve Bank of India’s move to reduce risk weights attached to commercial real estate lending and reduce the provisioning requirements for home loans signals the beginning of a reversal in the ...

NBFCS: NBFCs expect banks to be more responsive
Mumbai, Nov. 17 Non-banking finance companies expect banks to loosen their purse strings and lend more freely to them in the wake of the measures announced on Saturday by the Reserve Bank of India to enhance credit flow and liquidity ...

FIXED DEPOSITS: FCNR, NRE deposit rates hiked
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FOREX: Rupee down 40 paise
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SHORT TERM INSTRUMENTS: Call rate steady
Call rates closed at 6.90-7 per cent, as against the previous close of 6.75-7 per cent. In the one-day repo auction under the first liquidity adjustment facility (LAF), there were 3 bids for Rs 4,400 crore. There were no reverse repo bids. In ...

PUBLIC SECTOR BANKS: SBI’s cheque clearing facility
State Bank of India has inaugurated its 5th MICR (magnetic ink character recognition) cheque processing centre at Sripuram branch in Tirunelveli. The Rs 1.63-crore high-tech device has the capacity to electronically process 600 cheques a minute ...

FIXED DEPOSITS: TMB raises deposit rates
Tuticorin-based Tamilnad Mercantile Bank has hiked interest rates on domestic term deposits, effective from November 13. The interest rate for the maturity period of one year to five years has been revised upward by 50 basis ...

RBI & OTHER CENTRAL BANKS: ADB to step up aid for infrastructure projects, fill resource gaps
Sees drop in private sector appetite for such projects. New Delhi, Nov. 17 The Asian Development Bank will step up its financing assistance for infrastructure projects in India to fill the resource gap that may arise due to decline in appetite ...

HOUSING FINANCE: RBI sets loan rate cap for HFCs at Libor+ 200 bps
Too low, hard to borrow, say cos. Mumbai, Nov. 17 Even as the Reserve Bank of India has allowed housing finance companies (HFCs) to raise short-term foreign currency borrowings, the interest rate ceiling set is too low, which would make it very ...

FOREIGN BANKS: StanChart hopes to grow consumer banking
Mumbai, Nov. 17 Standard Chartered bank is looking to increase its field force and focus on relationships as a strategy to grow its consumer banking segment. The bank is planning to increase the number of relationship managers (RMs) by 10 ...

CRR & BANK RATES: ‘RBI steps not enough’
Chennai, Nov. 17 The monetary measures taken so far are not enough, said Mr N.S. Venkatesh, Managing Director, IDBI Gilts, a top primary ...

GOVT BONDS: Bonds range-bound
The bond market was dull and lacklustre and yields moved in a range of 5-6 basis points in intra-day trade, as the Reserve Bank of India did not announce a rate cut along with the other measures, on Saturday, as was widely ...

LIFE INSURANCE: Karnataka’s share in ICICI Pru biz
Karnataka has contributed 5.86 per cent to the overall business of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company, according to Mr Satyan Jambunathan, Senior Vice-President and Head (Finance), ICICI Prudential Life Insurance. Addressing presspersons ...

PEOPLE: New CEO of MCX-SX
MCX-SX, the currency futures exchange promoted by the Financial Technologies and MCX, has appointed Mr U. Venkataraman as the Chief Executive Officer. Mr Venkataraman was earlier Vice-President and the head of treasury at ...