United Bank eyeing overseas market

KOLKATA: Kolkata-based United Bank of India (UBI) has applied to the Reserve Bank of Indian (RBI) for opening overseas branches. The bank had plans to open a branch either in Bangladesh or in Myanmar, UBI''s chairman and managing director, Madhukar, said on Tuesday.
Buoyed by the autonomy status given to it by the government recently, the city-based United Bank of India (UBI) has embarked on an aggressive growth strategy which also includes opening up of more branches.
Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, Madhukar said that UBI had also delegated more sanctioning powers at the branch levels and also re-structured its head office.
In this context, he also informed that the bank had recently started a Corporate Business Group (CBG) and was eyeing a credit disbursement to the tune of Rs 2,000 crore through the CBG.
The latter would offer credit mainly to the industrial sector and project management with loan corpus of more than Rs 10 crore. According to Madhukar, there would be no hierarchical system in the CBG and would comprise only five to six ''dynamic officers'' and ''relationship officers'' in places like Mumbai and Delhi.
"It would cut short the delay in the sanctioning process and pick up the cream of the corporate proposals," asserted UBI''s general manager in charge of CBG, P Basu, while adding the sanctioning period had been reduced to two weeks.
"The CBG was launched in August this year and we have already disbursed Rs 500 crore in the last few weeks," he said.
On the retail front, the bank plans to tie up with major automobile, tractor as well as consumer durables manufacturers to become their preferred financier. Under the arrangement, the customers would be given special treatment if they opted for UBI loans and the bank hopes to finance 500 tractors during the current fiscal.
It has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Eicher Motors and L&T-John Deere Pvt Ltd for retail financing of the latters'' tractors. "We are also talking to three car companies and two consumer durables companies in this regard and hope to finalise the deals by Diwali," said Madhukar.
He further said that UBI would be opening a new branch in Sikkim as the "region has assumed importance due to the opening of the Nathula Pass". Beside, he added, the bank was also part of the official delegation to Myanmar.
Later, relying to a query on the proposed IPO, the UBI chief said that analysis of the bank''s capital requirement was still on. "Our capital adequacy ratio (CAR) was comfortable at 15 per cent and does not merit an IPO at the moment," he quipped.