BOB to have largest Global presence among Indian PSBs

Kolkata, Aug 2: Bank of Baroda, one of the largest profit making public sector banks, plans to open twelve more overseas branches by 2009 to intensify its pan-world presence further, besides emerging as the largest international bank of Indian origin.

Stating this BOB Chairman and Managing Director Anil Kumar Khandelwal told newsmen here today that in order to reach the landmark feet they had decided to open a full fledged branch in Singapore by September this year before opening similar offices in Port of Spain(WestIndies), Montreal(Canada), Johanesberg, Wellington(New Zealand), Sydney (Australia), Mosambique, Ghana, Male, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait within the next three years.

Further elaborating Dr Kghandelwal said, of the new 12 branches BOB had so far received the necessary clearance from RBI for opening the Singapore branch by September, while plans for opening other foreign branches were in various stages of approval.

Speaking about a host of other futeristic plans of BOB in the coming months, Dr Khandelwal said apart from tragetting 45 per cent overall growth in retail businesses,they had decided to increase the share of the Bank's global business turnover from the present about 16 per cent per annum to over 30 per cent from the current fisal itself.

This additional global businerss was likely to come from BOB's 59 overseas offices in 20 countries at present, the CMD emphasised.

He said with a view to becoming the second largest PSB in India in every sense the Board of Directors of BOB had approved the merger of National Bank, the largest private sector Bank in Uttar Pradesh with more than 75 branches, with BOB with immediate effect.

"We are also looking for suitable opportunity to acquire some other Indian as well as medium sized foreign banks as part of our ovwerall consolidation programme," Dr Khandelwala said, but refused to shed any further light on the issue and on the foreign entity.

He, however, hinted that some banks in East Africa might be considered for acquisition by BOB.

The BOB CMD, who arrived in the city this morning to inaugurate the bank's 9th Retail Loan Factory and the first in Eastern India, said these factory were to ensure sanction of all types of retail credits within maximum six days to customers and thereby setting a new benchmark for the Indian public sector banks in terms of utlising its credit portfolios.

He said since the bank was also planning to enter into the Insurance business in a big way through joint venture, they had shortlisted some of the prospective partners and started fruitful dialogues with them before choosing the right one among them, including a foreign collaborator.

However, despite repeated requests Dr Khandelwal refused to disclose the name of these prospective partners, including the overseas partner, since the talks were yet to be finalised with either of them.

Regarding his plan to increase the capital base of the Bank, BOB CMD said the Board rpt board had dedided to raise at least Rs 1,000 crores from the market this year which included about 100 million dollar bonds from the international market.

The amount would be raised both through Tier One and Tier Two routes as Perpetual bonds and Upper tier two bonds. The details are yet to be worked out, he said replying to further queries.

Dr Khandelwal also disclosed his plan to launch BOB Cards and set up an separate Asset Management Company to give a fresh look to the diversifying activities of the bank which had also set up a separate business model for the growth of SME sectors to ensure about 25 per cent growth in credit and nearly 20 per cent growth in deposits of the bank before the year end.

Plans were also afoot to bring in 900 of BOB's 2700 odd domestic branches under the Core Banking Solutions(CBS)by March 2008 to cater to 90 per cent of its clientels worldwide.

UNI