Syndicate Bank declares final divided of 13 per cent

Manipal, Jun 23: Public sector Syndicate Bank today declared a final dividend of 13 per cent for the year 2007-08 aggregating to 28 per cent with 15 per cent interim dividend already declared. Announcing this at a press conference, after the Annual General Meeting (AGM) here, Bank Executive Director George Joseph said that the AGM also approved for Qualitative Institutional Placement (QIP) for raising the fund instead of going for public issue. Declining to spacify as to when the bank would go for QIP, Mr Joseph said that the process would be initiated soon and the RBI had already permitted the proposal.

Replying a query, Mr Joseph said that the bank was exploring the possibility for going QIP as the expense cost in the public issue was very high. "It was proposed to issue Eight Crore shares, price tag of which is yet to be decided." He said that as per the Business Plan for 2008-09, the bank had projected a global business of Rs190,000 crore consisting of Rs 112,500 crore of Deposits and Rs 77,500 crore in advances. The Bank has also plans to increase its branch network and as on date 79 authorizations were in hand. 42 were proposed in under-banked districts. 46 branches were identified for rural and semi-urban areas and the bank had plans to open 32 branches in districts where it has no presence. The bank also expanded its reach geographically and opened 46 new branches during the year 2007=-08 to reach the total number of branches to 2174, he said.

He said that the bank had planned to procure an additional 250 ATMs with Cash Depository modules and Video Surveillance system to add to the existing number of 1000 ATMs. During the current fiscal, the bank had also planned to include more number of women customers to the bank's fold. It had targeted to add five lakh new women account during the campaign period of two month which had already taken up, he said.

UNI