R S Reddy, the chairman and managing director of Andhra Bank, expects the Reserve Bank of India to leave its key rates unchanged when it meets for the quarterly monetary policy review on July 27. The liquidity is still not plentiful and growth in deposit is not robust, he says.

Q&A: R S Reddy, CMD, Andhra Bank

Business Standard

Within 15 months of its launch, the newly-appointed chairman of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), Yogesh Agarwal, has decided to review the New pension Scheme (NPS) for non-government employees. There is no incentive for fund managers to push the product, he tells Vrishti Beniwal and Sidhartha. He&rsquo;s willing to allow them to appoint distributors and agents. The final decision will be taken after a new committee analyses the current system.

Q&A: Yogesh Agarwal, Chairman, PFRDA

The Mangalore-headquartered public sector lender, Corporation Bank, has posted a 28 per cent rise in its net profit to Rs 333.78 crore during the April-June period this financial year compared to a year earlier. The bank&rsquo;s net interest income, a major parameter of a bank&rsquo;s core earnings, also grew 49 per cent to Rs 659.59 crore during the same period.

There's no asset-liability mismatch: Corp bank ED

R M Malla, the newly-appointed IDBI chairman and managing director, has had hectic two weeks. First, he got the Rs 3,119-crore capital infusion from the government. Then, the bank decided to merge its housing-finance subsidiary with itself. And, now it is raising around $500 million through an overseas bond issue. Malla is no stranger to the entity. He had worked earlier in the development financial institution (DFI), before its conversion into a bank.

Q&A: R M Malla, CMD, IDBI

New Silk Route, which still has to invest 40 per cent of its $1.4-billion Asia dedicated fund, is looking to put $50-75 million into seven companies. The idea is fewer but larger deals, though there is no change in investment strategy. Its founder, General Partner and CEO, Parag Saxena, tells Shilpy Sinha and Sidhartha that the controversy around company Chairman Rajat Gupta is not going to hamper its plans.

Q&A: Parag Saxena, CEO, New Silk Route

During the global financial crisis, Indian banks showed resilience. Now, when the economy is shrugging off the effects of the crisis, signs of stress on the sector are emerging. Asset quality is under pressure for most and so is treasury income. Besides, liquidity has tightened and monetary policy tightening has begun.

Q&A: M V Nair, CMD, Union Bank

Indiareit Fund Advisors, the Ajay Piramal group-promoted realty fund which manages around Rs 1,900 crore worth of money, raised nearly Rs 400 crore from high net worth investors (HNIs) last week for its domestic real estate fund. Ramesh Jogani, managing director, talks to Raghavendra Kamath on the private equity (PE) scenario in Indian real estate and the company&rsquo;s recent fund raising.

Q&A: Ramesh Jogani, MD, Indiareit Fund Advisors

After spending more than 30 years with ICICI Bank, Kalpana Morparia moved to JP Morgan India around two years back. She is trying hard to change the perception of JP Morgan in the country and insists that it is much more than an investment bank. In a free-wheeling chat with Ashish Rukhaiyar, she says it is wrong to say that divestment has failed to attract retail investors.

Q&A: Kalpana Morparia, CEO, JP Morgan

FirstRand Bank, a financial services group in Africa is the first bank from the African continent to be granted a full scale commercial banking licence in India. The treasurer of the bank&rsquo;s Indian arm, Krishnamoorthy Harihar, spoke to Business Standard on inflation rising to 10.16 per cent and its implications on interest rates.

Q&A: Krishnamoorthy Harihar, Treasurer, FirstRand Bank India

With the ministry ruling in favour of the Insurance Regulatory &amp; Development Authority (Irda) and putting an end to the uncertainty over who gets to regulate unit-linked insurance plans (Ulips), insurers have heaved a sigh of relief and plan to launch new products. In an interview with Shilpy Sinha, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance MD &amp; CEO and Country Manager (Allianz) Kamesh Goyal says prolonging the matter would have been harmful for the industry.

Q&A: Kamesh Goyal, MD & CEO, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance

US-headquartered Silicon Valley Bank, financial partner to technology companies and venture capitalists worldwide, has been active in India. In the past two years, it debuted its venture debt arm and has been growing. Ajay Hattangdi, managing director of SVB India Finance, shares his perspectives with Raghuvir Badrinath on the growth in venture debt.

Q&A: Ajay Hattangdi, MD, SVB India Finance

At a time of global turbulence in the banking sector, Rana Kapoor, Founder and Chief Executive Officer YES Bank, believes further opening up of India&rsquo;s banking sector to foreign players will be mutually beneficial. Pallavi Aiyar caught up with him in the Spanish capital Madrid, where he was awarded with the &lsquo;India Business Leader of the Year&rsquo; award at a Global Indian Business Meeting hosted by Geneva-based networking organisation Horasis.

Q&A: Rana Kapoor, Founder & CEO, YES Bank

Ambit Corporate Finance has not been much in the news after the Sesa Goa-Dempo deal, but CEO, is not worried. He says there are several merger and acquisition deals in the pipeline and the coming months would see his firm featuring more prominently in the Initial Public Offering (IPO) arena. Also, he tells Ashish Rukhaiyar and Abhineet Kumar, the company has decided against getting into the stressed asset business.

'Global assets are selectively available at attractive prices'

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has been away from the government&rsquo;s disinvestment programme. With the new guidelines on fees to bankers in place, it could get back to that business, Saurabh Agrawal, managing director and head of investment banking, tells Abhineet Kumar and Sidhartha. But, even as he is bullish on Indian companies, he warns that investors are looking at valuations very carefully.

'Number of multi-billion dollar deals is at an all-time high'

The view outside the chairman and MD&rsquo;s cabins at ICICI Bank is the same &mdash; a carefully manicured rooftop garden. But Kundapur Vaman Kamath, who moved into the non-executive chairman&rsquo;s cabin a year ago, says he now looks at the greenery outside from &ldquo;a different perspective&rdquo;. That means he is reluctant to talk about any specifics regarding India&rsquo;s largest private sector bank. In an interview with Shyamal Majumdar, Kamath talks about why policy makers shouldn&rsquo;t prescribe a medicine so strong that it can derail the possibility of a 10 per cent-plus economic growth.

'The Greece crisis can be contained'

RBI&rsquo;s deputy governor reflects on his move from outsider to insider, from credit-rater to credit-provider.

Lunch with BS: Subir Gokarn

The disinvestment public sector companies may turn out to be be a big pie, but the fee and expense structure makes it unviable for investment bankers, says Tarun Kataria, managing director and head of global banking &amp; markets, HSBC India. In an interview with Ashish Rukhaiyar, he says the bank&rsquo;s equity capital markets (ECM) pipeline is strong and the merger and acquisition volume in India this year will be exponentially higher than last year.

'Fee structure makes PSU divestment business unviable'

After preparing for 18 months, Standard Chartered Bank &ndash; the country&rsquo;s second-largest foreign lender by assets &ndash; will open the first Indian depository receipt (IDR) issue in the history of the Indian capital markets on May 25. Group Chief Executive PETER SANDS talks to Sudeep Jain and Akash Joshi about the bank's growth prospects and the challenges it faced in bringing the issue to the market.

'The challenge is to explain how an IDR works'

Rohit Chatterji, the new managing director and head of investment banking at J P Morgan, is cautious about the European crisis turning from a liquidity issue to a solvency crisis. But in its present form, the problems in Europe are unlikely to impact fund-raising by Indian companies or investments into India, says Chatterji in an interaction with Abhineet Kumar and Sidhartha.

'Europe's problems will have a global impact'

The boards of ICICI Bank and Bank of Rajasthan (BoR) today put their seal of approval on the share exchange formula arrived at last week, when India&rsquo;s largest private sector lender announced the move to amalgamate BoR with itself.

ICICI Bank-Bank of Rajasthan swap ratio fixed at 1:4.72

The current crisis in the euro zone will not create any major problems for India, but a 10-15 per cent correction in markets is not ruled out if it worsens, says Ridham Desai, managing director and head of equities at Morgan Stanley India. In an interview with Vandana, he says India will outperform emerging markets.

Page 41 - Interviews