The Hindu Business Line : BoB plans opening 10 overseas branches

Chennai May 25 Bank of Baroda intends to open ten overseas branches this year, the Chairman and Managing Director, Dr A.K. Khandelwal, told presspersons here on Friday.

These will be at Port of Spain (Trinidad & Tobago), Accra (Ghana), Bahrain, second branch in Johannesburg (South Africa), ninth in UK, second in Tanzania, second in Botswania, eighth in Kenya, Canada and one representative office in Australia. In addition, a joint venture company, along with Punjab National Bank and Andhra Bank would be set up in Malaysia, he said.

"All regulatory approvals from both sides (RBI as well as the regulator of the host country) are in place," Dr Khandelwal said.

Corporate branch

He was here in connection with the inauguration of a specialist corporate banking branch in Chennai. The branch would handle all of BoB's corporate customers, whose turnover is over Rs 100 crore.

The bank already has a considerable overseas presence — it has 61 branches in 21 countries. Its overseas business is about Rs 40,000 crore, and grew 71 per cent last year.

Dr Khandelwal said that the bank was "exploring possibilities of opening branches" in Kuwait, Yemen, New Zealand and Surinam "to name a few places".

Overseas branches contributed 20 per cent to the bank's total business of Rs 2.09 lakh crore last year. A third of its profit of Rs 1,026 crore came from overseas operations.

Yet, BoB is not a major player in either funding of cross-border M&As or in offering multi-currency hedging products.

Answering a question, Dr Khandelwal said that last year the bank participated in funding for seven cross-border acquisitions, but admitted that it was still a small player in the business. As regards offering hedging products, he said that BoB was in the process of training its staff to be able to deliver such products in the future.

Meanwhile, it is learnt that the bank has transferred Rs 1,100 crore of securities from `available for sale' to `held to maturity' category.

It would have to book depreciation of Rs 37 crore on account of this, which will be reflected in the results of the current quarter.

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