Innholdsfortegnelse for 6 March 2022 i Business Today

THIS YEAR’S Union Budget announced many measures such as higher capital expenditure, a new cryptocurrency tax and revised disinvestment targets, among others. Some of the key officials behind the Union Budget of 2022-23—Finance Secretary T.V. Somanathan, Revenue Secretary Tarun Bajaj and DIPAM Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey—throw light on these aspects in detail and also talk about the revival in the private investment cycle, the sale of Air India to the Tata group, and Life Insurance Corporation of India’s forthcoming initial public offering (IPO) in an interaction with Business Today’s Siddharth Zarabi. Edited excerpts: Why are you not distributing cash at least to those who need it? Somanathan: We are not distributing cash but we are spending a lot of cash which gets into the pockets of [the] people. We are…

IN A BANKING career that has lasted more than four decades, 71-year-old Romesh Sobti has traversed the terrain of slow-moving public sector banks, the hard-nosed foreign banks, and also the street-smart private sector banks. When he hung up his boots in March 2020, he was one of the longest-standing CEOs in the country—in his 46 years as a banker he has been chief executive for nearly 24 years! Starting his career with the country’s largest lender, State Bank of India in 1973, he subsequently joined ANZ Grindlays Bank (now Standard Chartered Bank) in a senior role. He later went on to serve at ABN Amro as India head for 12 years before taking charge at IndusInd Bank as its MD & CEO. “The basic rules of banking across sectors have…

BINARIES ARE restricted to the lines of code powering Axis Bank’s systems, no longer finding a place in its gender lens. The private lender, with a workforce comprising more than 78,000 people, hit upon the idea of a ‘ComeAsYouAre’ charter for LGBTQIA+ people among its customers and employees when a regional business head pointed out the opportunity in banking services for transgender people, who have historically been left out of the financial system. From having a trans-person heading their D&I initiatives, to hiring people of non-binary genders, to a mediclaim and leave policy for gender affirmation surgery and permitting same-sex joint accounts, Axis Bank stands out from its peers in the talent and workforce management category of the BT-KPMG Best Banks Survey 2020-21. Since the charter was rolled out in…

₹17.46 LAKH CRORE The size of HDFC Bank’s balance sheet, which is equal to the total of the balance sheets of Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and IndusInd Bank EXIT FROM CATEGORY Union Bank of India Merger with Andhra Bank and Corporation Bank Indian Bank Merger with Allahabad Bank Canara Bank Merger with Syndicate Bank Punjab National Bank Merger with Oriental Bank of Commerce and United Bank of India Three-year growth is compounded annual growth rate (CAGR); Values in each parameter are rounded off up to two decimals; NPA: Nonperforming assets; CASA: Current account savings account; CAR: Capital adequacy ratio; ROCE: Return on capital employed; NIM: Net interest margin; ^RA: Restructured assets/Total average loans and advances; ORA: Outstanding restructured assets; LCR: Liquidity coverage ratio; For explanation of parameters and how…

22.91 PER CENT The fall in loans and advances reported by Bank of America in 2020-21 over the previous year *New entrants from Group Small Foreign Banks to Group IV due to asset size increase; Three-year growth is compounded annual growth rate (CAGR); Values in each parameter are rounded off up to two decimals; NPA: Non-performing assets; CASA: Current account savings account; CAR: Capital adequacy ratio; ROCE: Return on capital employed; NIM: Net interest margin; RA: Restructured assets/Total average loans and advances; ORA: Outstanding restructured assets; LCR: Liquidity coverage ratio; For explanation of parameters and how total score was arrived at, see Picking the Winners, page 82…

The Covid-19 pandemic has put the focus back on the need for healthy living. It has made people more conscious about what they use and consume, with many being keen on natural therapies and natural living. But natural living is no new fad for Vishal Agrawal, and certainly not something he took up as a whim after the pandemic struck. In fact, it was quite the opposite. After the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, some offices got back to work. And Agrawal found himself doling out advice to colleagues on how to protect themselves using naturopathy. “With my understanding of herbs, I used to guide my colleagues in making ‘Kadha’ (an ayurvedic home remedy that is believed to increase immunity and guard against seasonal infections). From going grocery shopping…

Source: Election Commission of India; annual audit reports ₹3,585 CRORE The amount of money spent by the BJP on elections ₹1,405 CRORE The amount of money spent by the Indian National Congress 8.43 PER CENT The percentage of the total amount which is the election outlay of the five other national parties…

The Arms race commenced in the late nineteenth century. Soon the British and the Germans, the Turks and the Greeks, France and Italy were all engaged in one to one, micro conflicts building up arms against each other right up to the First World War. Once the Second World War was over, the Cold War took the arms race to another level involving nuclear stockpiles. While the Cold War is over, the arms race continues between multiple adversaries-Israel vs the rest of the Islamic World, India vs Pakistan, North vs South Korea, China vs US vs Russia etc. A country's strength is today evaluated primarily on the basis of military strength along with economic prowess. The latter is again measured on various factors like physical infrastructure, GDP size/growth, per capita…

The Union Budget for 2022-23 has been hailed for looking at long-term, sustainable growth, where the government has focussed on capex to revive the economy. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in a freewheeling chat with Business Today’s Rahul Kanwal, Sourav Majumdar, Udayan Mukherjee, Siddharth Zarabi and Aabha Bakaya, spells out why she took the capex expansion path and why the reduced disinvestment target doesn’t mean the government is less enthusiastic about privatisation. Edited excerpts: KANWAL: Some economists said the need was immediate [relief]… when you should have been pumping up your revenue expenditure to provide succour to people, you’re choosing to look out into the future [by focussing on capital expenditure]. By then some of those people would have drowned economically. How do you respond to this? A: I’m actually providing a certain…

FOLLOWING THE impasse over the farm laws that led to their withdrawal, it was widely expected that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman would make a host of new proposals in the Union Budget to win them back again. In fact, the Budget makes clear that the government is keen to address the structural issues in agriculture (which the farm laws were meant to address) rather than hand out short-term palliatives. On many counts, the Union Budget 2022 scores on several fronts, especially in the area of capital expenditure, which has been increased by 35.4 per cent. This is expected to boost investments from corporates and generate more jobs as well. There is a realisation that agritech has to be the engine that propels those structural changes, leading to farm prosperity. A…

54.65 PER CENT The growth in the total deposits of YES Bank in 2020-21 over the previous financial year *New entrants from small banks to mid-sized banks; Three-year growth is compounded annual growth rate (CAGR); Values in each parameter are rounded off up to two decimals; NPA: Non-performing assets; CASA: Current account savings account; CAR: Capital adequacy ratio; ROCE: Return on capital employed; NIM: Net interest margin; ^RA: Restructured assets/Total average loans and advances; ORA: Outstanding restructured assets; LCR: Liquidity coverage ratio; For explanation of parameters and how total score was arrived at, see Picking the Winners, page 82…

65.49 PER CENT The NPA coverage ratio reported by Utkarsh Small Finance Bank, which is the highest among its peers Two-year growth is compounded annual growth rate (CAGR); Values in each parameter are rounded off up to two decimals; NPA: Nonperforming assets; CASA: Current account savings account; CAR: Capital adequacy ratio; ROCE:Return on capital employed; NIM: Net interest margin; ^RA: Restructured assets/Total average loans and advances; ORA: Outstanding restructured assets; LCR: Liquidity coverage ratio; For explanation of parameters and how total score was arrived at, see Picking the Winners, page 82…

For Shikhee Agarwal, AVP of Kiehl’s India, life is an adventure. For the past decade and a half, the 44-year-old mother of two (aged seven and three) has been driving her four-wheeler across mountains, deserts, forests and plains. If there is a road, Agarwal will drive on it, sometimes even when there is no road. Agarwal, who heads Kiehl’s operations in India, currently drives an Isuzu V-Cross truck. “I always keep my Isuzu trolley loaded with tent and accessories as my road trips are usually on the go and never planned,” says Agarwal who has driven from Kedarnath to Kanyakumari. Her first impromptu road trip was 15 years ago when she drove from Delhi to Leh via Lahaul Spiti valley. Agarwal’s love for adventure can be traced back to when…

RAHUL BAJAJ and I had a rather unusual relationship. He knew my father (the industrialist R.P. Goenka) well and addressed him as guru. The fact that I was much younger never mattered and he always reached out to me. I called him Rahul bhaiya and for me, it was a combination of respect and friendship. Our families knew each other for a few generations and to that extent, this was a long and old connection. Rahul Bajaj used to come home often and have long conversations with my father on our group’s acquisitions. He was a man with a curious mind and the “why and what” always intrigued him. There are two or three incidents that come to mind immediately. At one point, Rahul Bajaj wanted to acquire Ashok Leyland.…

SIXTY FOUR-year-old Rajnish Kumar’s journey at the country’s largest bank, the State Bank of India (SBI), started 42 years ago when he landed in Auraiya tehsil in Uttar Pradesh. He had no place to stay when he got down at the station. The son of a government employee in UP’s irrigation department, Kumar decided to straightaway proceed to the bank branch where he was posted as a probationary officer. Over the years, Kumar crossed one hurdle after another to finally occupy the corner room of the ₹39 lakh crore-plus assets size banking behemoth. The big turning point in his career came in the mid-1990s when he was posted to Toronto, Canada. “Getting overseas assignments in those days was considered very coveted,” he says. In fact, he was posted abroad twice,…

IF ALL BANKS are cricket players, AU Small Finance Bank is the M.S. Dhoni among them—dependable, understanding, accountable and honest,” says MD & CEO Sanjay Agarwal of his banking venture, which caters to small borrowers in under-banked and underserved geographies. “When I finished CA in 1995, job opportunities in and around Jaipur were not that high… I started this company for my own livelihood.” Twenty-six years on, it is one of the few small banks to have weathered the pandemic well: At ₹51,591 crore, its assets are almost twice as much as its nearest competitor and its ROCE is the highest among its peers at nearly 22 per cent—making it the Best Small Finance Bank in the BT-KPMG Best Banks Survey 2020-21. But AU did not start out as a…

WITH A LEGACY spanning over two centuries, the State Bank of India (SBI) has not only maintained its leadership in deposits as well as advances, but also shown the way to the banking industry. The Mumbai-headquartered bank has now identi fied technology, resilience and people as the three pillars for its next phase of growth. In the BT-KPMG Best Banks Survey 2020-21, SBI was the unanimous choice of the jury for Enterprise Resilience. In a post-pandemic world, SBI, with a domestic loan book of over ₹23 lakh crore is rock steady. The bank’s super app YONO (You Only Need One) is handing out digital loans, offering investment products, etc. Swaminathan Janakiraman, MD (Risk, Compliance & Stressed Assets Resolution Group) said recently that the changing regulatory landscape has made it essential…

TECHNOLOGY HAS BEEN the crux of the Indian banking system and the advent of Covid-19 has fuelled the shift of business models from ‘physical’ to ‘digital’. The journey of innovation, which started with internet banking and digital means of payments, graduated to account opening, digital lending, wealth-tech and invest-tech solutions, and now has moved close to digital banks with the advent of neo-banking models/‘bankingas-a-service’ platform providers. With rising customer demand for virtual banking, increasing significance of superior customer experience, growth of the ecommerce market, and the rise of the fintechs, digital has almost become synonymous with banking in current times. It has also made banking accessible to the non-banked/under-banked. The lending business has also been influenced by digitisation. A riveting evolution of digitisation across the lending landscape in India over…

10.64 PER CENT The return on capital employed (ROCE) for City Union Bank, which is the highest among all small-sized Indian banks Three-year growth is compounded annual growth rate (CAGR); Values in each parameter are rounded off up to two decimals; NPA: Nonperforming assets; CASA: Current account savings account; CAR: Capital adequacy ratio; ROCE: Return on capital employed; NIM: Net interest margin; ^RA: Restructured assets/Total average loans and advances; ORA: Outstanding restructured assets; LCR: Liquidity coverage ratio; For explanation of parameters and how total score was arrived at, see Picking the Winners, page 82…

AFTER ALMOST two years of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, the banking industry is finally showing some resilience. Most banks are well-stocked with capital and liquidity, and profitability and asset quality numbers are improving. The big challenge is credit growth. In addition, the real picture of non-performing assets (NPAs) will come out only after the end of several regulatory forbearances. This was the backdrop against which Business Today and KPMG commenced its annual exercise. The task was to analyse banks’ balance sheets and reach out to them for their initiatives on innovation, fintech engagement, talent and workforce man-agement and enterprise resilience. The innovation category received 80-plus nominations. Under talent and workforce, banks responded to the future of workplace parameters with innovative practices like work from home, hot seat concept, gig,…