The Hindu Business Line : SBI cleared $1 b for Tatas in five minutes: Bhatt

NEW DELHI: Claiming that no bank in the world could match it in quick decision making, State Bank of India (SBI) on Tuesday said it cleared $1 billion loan for Tatas in just five minutes, a philosophy that has put it much ahead of competitors on overseas mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals.

"SBI has become so nimble that when Tata-Corus did not get that last bit of $1 billion funding, we sanctioned in five minutes... Recently, we have done Rs 12,000 crore. No bank in the world can do this kind of funding in 5-10 minutes. We have been doing it,'' SBI Chairman O P Bhatt told PTI.

SBI, which has evinced interest in overseas acquisition of a big entity, is already the highest contributor on foreign asset building and M&A during the first quarter this year and would remain so in the next quarter too.

Asked if he feared that the fast growing private lender ICICI Bank could replace it as the top player in the arena, Mr Bhatt said: "I am not apprehensive about rise of ICICI Bank... its CEO K V Kamath has gone on record that he is not competing with SBI and that he does not want to overtake SBI. He is the same person who was saying that he will overtake SBI.''

On reports that ICICI had overtaken the public sector lender on foreign asset building recently, Mr Bhatt asserted that SBI was ahead of the competitors. "Even in terms of foreign assets ICICI Bank has not overtaken us. It has not overtaken in absolute terms but in percentage terms,'' he added. - PTI

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