ICICI eyes massive growth in global investment banking space

Mumbai, Aug 17 (UNI) The Country's top private bank ICICI is readying to grab a major pie of the booming global investment banking space.

According to its Deputy Managing Director Chanda Kochhar, the bank has had its presence in 79 percent of the outbound M&A deals in current year as against 53 percent last year.

While the total value of the Indian M&A deals grew to 47.4 billion US dollars from 8.3 bilion US dollars during 2003-06, marking a growth of 140 percent in Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR), ICICI was advisor in 18 outbound deals, which has a aggregate valuation of 16.53 billion US dollars.

''During these years, the bank has achieved strong product innovation and global distribution system, which will enable the client for a flawless execution of the transactions in the global arenas . With a balance sheet of 87.7 bilion US dollars and a market capitalisation of 23 billion US dollars, ICICI is the largest investment bank in India'', Kochhar told reporters today.

Bank has an international balance sheet of 19 billion US dollars, the largest by any Indian Bank, while International operations accounted for 20 percent of the bank's consolidated banking assets.

The bank is planning to focus more on outbound deals(M&A deals carried out by Indian companies in overseas) 'which is more feasible also on the regulatory side', said Kochhar.

ICICI, which started off its investment banking business nearly four years back, had been advisor in many key transactions including UB group- Whyte&Mackay Deal , RCL-CII Carbon deal, Suzlon- RE Power and Videocon-Thompson SA's CPT plants deal .

Investment banks used to receive nearly two percent of a deal's value as commission.

UNI