Avenues to invest in demat form of gold

Uncertainty in the global markets, slow recovery of developed nations, volatility in the stock market and sub-optimal economic policies across the countries has forced people to find safer havens for investment. This is where gold scores over other options. Not only people, nations are also reposing their faith in gold. Gold has been making waves ever since S&P downgraded credit rating of USA from AAA to AA+. It crossed the 26,000 mark in three trading sessions. We are not going to predict the price of gold here, but we will provide some avenues...

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Corporation Bank aims at zero net NPA this fiscal

NEW DELHI, AUG. 20: Corporation Bank, a public sector lender, aims to turn itself into a bank with zero net non-performing assets (NPA) during this financial year, its Chairman and Managing Director, Mr Ramnath Pradeep, has said. Currently, the net NPA as a percentage of advances stood at about 0.47 per cent. Mr Pradeep sees increased trend of NPAs on the education loans front, stating that this segment had turned “vulnerable” in the recent years. Refutes charges Meanwhile, Mr Pradeep denied the charges made against him by the Central Vigilance...

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SBI Mutual Fund launches new SBI Gold Fund

SBI Mutual Fund has launched a new fund offer, SBI Gold Fund, an open-ended fund of fund scheme to enable investors to invest systematically in gold and gain advantage of the recent rally in the metal's prices. The corpus collected from the NFO would be invested in SBI Gold Exchange Traded Fund. "It is a convenient product and will give an opportunity to an investor to invest in the purest form of gold without buying and storing physical gold, that too, without a dematerialised account unlike gold exchange traded funds," SBI MF Managing Director...

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SBI, HDFC unlikely to re-launch teaser loans

Leading home loan players which aggressively pursued fixed-cum-floating loans are not likely to respond to ICICI Bank’s ‘teaser loans’. ICICI Bank, the largest private sector lender, on Thursday unveiled a dual rate product which charges a fixed rate in the initial years and adjusts to the market rate later. State Bank of India (SBI) which pioneered teaser loan products in the country and Housing Development Finance Corp (HDFC), which followed suit, are in no mood to revisit the controversial product which drew flak from the Reserve Bank of India...

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Data reporting should be automated, RBI tells banks

Alarmed at the trend of state-run banks' profitability eroding soon after their chairmen retire, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked banks to ensure the absence of human intervention in the maintenance and submission of regulatory reports. The move is aimed at minimising the scope of errors and manipulations in management information systems (MIS) or data warehouses of banks, sources familiar with the development said on condition of anonymity. MIS contains various data like provisioning requirement, non-performing assets, top borrowers and...

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ICICI teases with fixed rate home loans

Mumbai: Amidst a rising interest rate scenario, where home loan rates have gone up between 2-3 percentage points, ICICI Bank is wooing customers by offering them an option of a fixed rate for either the first one year or two years. Subsequently, however, the borrower will have to switch to a floating rate linked to the bank’s base rate. Although similar to the ‘teaser’ scheme that State Bank of India (SBI) had earlier launched, the difference in the ICICI Bank’s product is that the fixed coupon is linked to the base rate and in line with the current...

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ICICI Bank fined Rs 25,000, ordered to compensate customer

NEW DELHI: ICICI Bank has been slapped with a fine of Rs 25,000 by a Delhi district consumer forum for wrongly deducting Rs 40,578 from the account of one of its customers. Deprecating the bank's act of wrongly deducting the money from its customer Mahesh Kumar's salary account as a breach of trust, the consumer forum headed by its president B B Chaudhary asked the bank official to credit both the sum for the fine and the wrongly deducted money to his account. "The official of the bank had come to know on or about July 11, 2009 that mistake had...

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Bank licences: 4 sectors may be barred

Amid the debate over whether or not to allow corporate houses to enter into the banking sector, the finance ministry is planning to bar industrial houses conducting business in four sectors, including real estate, from seeking banking licences. “We have prepared a negative list of four sectors that will be barred from entering the banking space. These sectors can manipulate the system because of which we don’t want them to come,” sources in the know told The Indian Express. The corporates, however, may be allowed to apply for new licences subject...

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ICICI Bank launches fixed rate home loan scheme

Mumbai: India's No. 2 lender ICICI Bank on Thursday launched a fixed-interest-rate home loan scheme, where customer will get home loans at a fixed interest rate for one or two year years, post which the loan will move to floating interest rate. These products will be available from Aug 19, the bank in a statement. Under the one year fixed rate home loan, the customer can avail a loan at 10.5 percent for an amount less than or equal to 2.5 million rupees, 11 percent for a loan amount greater than 2.50 million rupees and less than or equal to 7.50...

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Syndicate Bank likely to buy 26% in Aviva Life

Aviva Life has emerged as the front-runner for tying up with Syndicate Bank for its proposed insurance joint venture. According to sources, the Manipal-headquartered lender is likely to pick up 26 per cent stake. Mohit Burman, director of fast-moving consumer goods major, the Dabur Group, holds 74 per cent stake. The rest is held by UK's Aviva. A Syndicate Bank official said the bidding process was still on and the bank was yet to decide on the insurance partner. "We have just finished receiving the financial bids and would shortlist three-four...

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Will maintain anti-inflationary stance, says RBI

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) continues to focus on controlling inflation and inflationary expectations even as inflation has shown some signs of easing. RBI Deputy Governor KC Chakrabarty on Wednesday said the central bank sticks to the policy stance as stated in the quarterly review statement in July. "Whatever the inflation guidance is given in the quarterly statement (July) that stands as of today," Chakrabarty said on the sidelines of an event here. The wholesale price index (WPI)-based inflation was at 9.22 per cent in July, down from 9.44...

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Govt may decide on SBI rights issue in 3 months

The government is likely to decide on the rights issue proposal of country's largest lender State Bank India (SBI) in the next three months to fund its capital requirement for future business growth. "We will be taking a call on rights issues or other options through which capital can be infused in SBI within next 2-3 months," official sources said. The government would also examine other route of capital infusion like follow-on public offer (FPO), Qualified Institutional Placement (QIP), etc, taking into view the second quarter provisional numbers. The...

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Why SIPs are the way to go

Quite often, I come across investors who by their own behavior make investments more complicated than they actually are. If looked at with a clear mindset and proper understanding, investments – in both stocks and funds – are actually a simple matter. There are just a few basic rules that an investor needs to follow in order to make sure that his investments are functioning as per his requirements. The one simple aspect of investing that quite a few people end up floundering is Systematic Investment Plans (SIP). The problem here is that many investors...

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IFCI, Sycamore Ventures launch $500-mn infrastructure fund

NEW DELHI: Financial institution IFCI Ltd, in association with global investment firm Sycamore Ventures, on Tuesday announced to set up a USD 500-million (about Rs 2,250 crore) infrastructure fund. As the principal sponsor to the fund, IFCI has committed to invest 10 per cent of the total capital of the fund with a minimum commitment of USD 50 million, the country's oldest financial institution said in a statement. The fund will raise capital from domestic and overseas investors and will be registered, with Sebi as a venture capital fund, it...

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SBI hopes to see profit grow to Rs 2,500 cr in Q2

New Delhi: Having posted a decline in profit for two successive quarters, State Bank of India (SBI) hopes to clock an increase in its bottomline to Rs 2,500 crore in the second quarter on account of lower provisioning against bad loans. "We expect to turn in another Rs 7,200 crore of operating profit. If you leave out the one-off provisions, which had happened due to raising of prudential norms and also the investment provision, we expect a normal provisioning of Rs 2,500-3,000 crore," SBI Chairman Pratip Chaudhuri said. "So we would possibly look...

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Dhanlaxmi Bank hikes retail term deposit rates

South-based lender Dhanlaxmi Bank today hiked its retail term deposit rates in two baskets, taking it into double digits in one maturity. Under the new rate slabs applicable from today, depositors will earn 10% per annum for a special 300-day term deposit, a statement issued here by the bank said. The rate of 10% is applicable for deposits under Rs one crore, it added. A decision to introduce the special product offering 10% has been taken keeping in mind the present high inflation environment, the bank's head of branch banking and NRI business...

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Muthoot Finance to raise up to Rs 1,000 crore through NCD issue

MUMBAI: Muthoot Finance, the largest gold financing company in terms of loan portfolio, on Tuesday said it is raising up to Rs 1,000-crore through a public issue of secured redeemable non-convertible debentures. The company plans maiden public issue of secured, redeemable, non-convertible debentures (NCDs) of face value of Rs 1,000 each aggregating up to Rs 500 crore with an option to retain over subscription up to Rs 500 crore, aggregating to a total of up to Rs 1,000 crore, a company statement said. The NCD issue with three investment options...

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Cheque transactions value down 13.9% in June: RBI

The cumulative value of transactions carried out through cheques across the country during June 2011 amounts to Rs 7.19 lakh crore, a 13.9 per cent decline vis-a-vis the 2010 period, according to new RBI data. Banks had cleared cheques worth Rs 8.35 lakh crore in 2010 Banks had cleared cheques worth Rs 8.35 lakh crore in June, 2010, according to the latest data from the Reserve Bank of India. The total number of cheques cleared by banks across the country during June 2010 was also 3.8 per cent less than in the same month last year. A total of 10.62...

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Now, any bank can now join national financial switch

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has said any bank with round-the-clock core banking solution capabilities, with or without ATMs, can now join the national financial switch (NFS) through a sponsor bank. NPCI is an umbrella institution for all the Retail Payments Systems' in the country. The move is aimed at facilitating even non-scheduled urban cooperative banks and regional rural banks to have access to the national network of over 78,000 ATMs in the country, NPCI managing director and chief executive AP Hota said in a release. So...

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Over two lakh sign up for SIPs in June & July

Mumbai, Jul 27: After dabbling in stocks with abandon, and a few burnt fingers later, the average Indian investor is now wider, and more mature. With the markets remaining volatile in the past six months, swinging with global developments, investors have taken refuge under mutual funds (MFs). More and more investors are signing up for systematic investment plans (SIPs) of MFs, rather than investing in equities directly. Indian MFs have seen more than 2 lakh new SIP accounts being opened with different fund houses in the last two months. This month,...

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