Corporation Bank acquires currency trading unit in Middle East

Kolkata, Jun 30 (UNI) Public sector Corporation Bank, which has targetted to take its business to Rs 1,00,000 crores by 2008-09, has just acquired a foreign exchange money transfer company in Oman, besides, intitiating the process of taking over the management of another one in Qatar by next month, Bank's Chairman and Managing Director B Sambamurthy announced here today.

Speaking to newsmen on the sidelines of the FICCI Eastern Regional Council sponsored 'Banking Conclave - 2006', here today Mr Sambamurthy said they were also poised to launch Corporation Bank's own credit card in the market before December this year thereby opening a new business opportunity for the Bangalore based bank.

In terms of increasing the century-old Bank's pan India presence, the Corporation Bank is set to open at least 165 new branches this year to take the total number of its nationwide branches to 1,000 before March 2007.

Incidentally, at present the total number of branches stood at 835 and the number of ATMs was 903, Mr Sambamurthy said.

Elaborating the acquisition of the 'total management control' of the Omanese company, the Corporation Bank CMD said it was cleared by the Bank's Board of Directors at its very last meeting on June 28, which had also allowed the management to go ahead with the taking over the control of another such company in Qatar by next month.

The board also recommended 70 per cent dividend for the Bank's shareholders.

He said as a major initiative of fulfilling the bank's vision for the future they had also decided to open the Banks maiden foreign office in Dubai within the next fortnight.

"Though the office will initially work as the Representative office, it will later be converted into a full fledged branch, possibly within the next couple of years, on the basis of its performance", Mr Sambamurthy said.

Referring to other future plans of the bank which had grown by over 24 per cent in terms of business growth during the past two years, the Chairman said during the current fiscal their prime focus was on increasing the volume of retail trade and credit to the booming manufacturing sector.

He, however, refused to categorise on the profitability target of the bank for the current fiscal because of the SEBI restrictions, but said before March 31 they were planning to increase the business tunover to Rs 70,000 crores from Rs 57,000 crores last year, before reaching the target of Rs 100,000 crores by 2008-09.

MORE UNI ABA TJP KLC1503