Fed Bank posts Rs 292.73 crore net profit

Kochi, Sep 24: The Federal Bank has posted a record net profit of Rs 292.73 crore in the fiscal 2006-07, as against Rs 225.21 crore the preceeding year and declared a dividend of 40 per cent.

The 76th Annual General Meeting adopted the financial results of the last fiscal and re-elected former Chairman of the Rubber Board P C Cyriac and Prof Abraham Koshy of IIM-A and Chairman of ASIA CYRO-Cell Private Ltd P Surendra Pai as Directors of the bank, according to a company release here today.

Bank Chairman and CEO M Venugopalan said the total business grew by 23.19 per cent to Rs 36,483.54 crore and had a total deposit of Rs 21,584.44 crore and total advances of Rs 14,899.10 crore during 2006-07.

The Bank's lending to the priority sector as on March 31, 2007 accounted for 43.90 per cent of the net bank credit.

The net NPAs were reduced to 0.44 per cent as compared to 0.95 per cent at the end of March 2006.

The total net worth of the bank as on March 31, 2007 stood at Rs 1,502.21 crore and the Book Value shares increased from Rs 146.03 to Rs 175.48.

The NRI deposits stood at Rs 5,514 crore and to cater to the fund transfer requirement of the NRIs, the bank had arrangements with 20 Exchange Houses and eight banks, which offered seamless direct remittance facility to the bank's branches.

During the year 2006-07, bank expanded its network to 536 branches and added 32 branches of erstwhile Ganesh Bank of Kurundwad Ltd.

The Bank had entered into a JV with IDBI Ltd, and Fortis Insurance International NV to seize the opportunities in the insurance sector.

The bank had acquired Professional Clearing Membership in three major commodity exchanges of India, NCDEX, MCX and NMCE, to finance delivery-based transactions in these exchanges.

UNI