The Hindu Business Line : Vijaya Bank on recruitment spree

Chennai June 25 Vijaya Bank has just taken 150 people on its rolls and plans to add another 250 in the next few months, but the whole recruitment will be wage bill-neutral because of retirements in the current year.

The bank has recruited chartered accountants and experts in areas of management, law, agriculture and treasury operations, and some clerks too.

Recruitment was necessary to build a talent pool within the bank so that it is able to operate in new areas such as commodities trading and offer modern products, such as hedging instruments, to its customers.

Vijaya Bank ended 2006-07 with a total business of Rs 62,000 crore and has set itself a target of Rs 76,000 crore for the current year, the Executive Director, Mr T. Valliappan, told Business Line today.

The bank has set for itself certain goal posts. It has begun an exercise to open "one million new savings/current accounts" by August. Aggressive branching strategy is being adopted, with plans to add 75 branches to the existing network of 978 branches.

"Many of them will be rural branches," Mr Valliappan said, noting that all the rural branches would be fully networked.

He said that the bank's 172 ATMs would soon be linked up with about 8,000 ATMs of other branches through the National Financial Switch.

Meanwhile, the bank intends to raise Rs 700 crore this year. Of this, Rs 200 crore would be raised as (bonds) lower tier-II capital and the rest through an issue of perpetual preference shares.