PNB to open London subsidiary on May 10

Bangalore, Apr 26 (UNI) Spreading its wings globally, leading public sector bank, Punjab National Bank (PNB), will open its United Kingdom subsidiary on May ten, its Chairman S C Gupta announced today Talking to newsmen here, Mr Gupta said initially the bank would have two branches, one exclusively for retail lending and another fo corporates.

By opening a subsidiary in the UK, PNB would be upgrading its representative office, he added.

It would also open a branch in Hong Kong and float a subsidiary in Canada besides an offshore banking unit in Singapore.

Necessary approvals from the RBI had been received for opening the branches in these countries. Already the bank was operating a branch at Kabul besides representative offices in Shanghai, Almaty, Dubai.

The bank grew by 22 per cent in fiscal 2007 to achieve a total business of around Rs 2.40 lakh crore. For the current year the target was around 2.80 lakh crore.

The net profit also went up by around 20 per cent he said adding during the current fiscal also the bank would aim to achieve similar growth.

Here to review the Karnataka operations of the bank, Mr Gupta saw no further hardening of the interest rates.

He justified the recent enhancement in the rates and said with credit offtake increasing by 30 per cent for three successive years, there was need to check growth.

UNI