Canara Bank

Mumbai, Sept 4 (UNI) The state owned Canara Bank and the ICICI Bank have both made a pitch to acquire the United Western Bank, which has over 200 branches, including 90 in Maharashtra.

Canara Bank informed the Bombay Stock Exchange, that thier Board of Directors have taken a decision to submit their Expression of Interest for the takeover of United Western Bank, in view of a number of positive synergies in between the two banks, especially in terms of network, geographical contiguity, the bank's excellent tract record as the largest Nationalised bank and UWB's need for a strong, effective and professional management.

The bank has submitted its Expression of Interest to RBI and requested them to permit them to carry out due diligence in order to submit its detailed proposal.

Prior to this, a leading private sector bank, ICICI has also evinced interest to acquire UWB.

In a notice issued to the BSE, ICICI Bank has called for a Board Meeting today to consider whether an expression of interest should be submitted to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for amalgamation of United Western Bank (UWB) with their bank, pursuant to the order of moratorium announced in respect of UWB.

Meanwhile, United Western Bank has also informed the BSE that the Central Government U/s 45 of Banking Regulation Act, 1949 has issued an Order of Moratorium in respect of the Bank for the period 14.00 hours on September 02, 2006 upto and inclusive of December 01, 2006.

As a consequence of this order certain restrictions as mentioned in the said order have been imposed on their banking operations and now depositors will be entitled to withdraw a sum not exceeding Rs 10,000/- of the total balance lying in their credit.

UNI SN WD SKB1638