Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said on Monday it had received 26 applications for new bank licences

from private and public entities, with Tata Sons Ltd, the holding company for India's largest conglomerate, among those seeking the right to set up the first new Indian banks since 2004. Other applicants include Reliance Capital, controlled by billionaire Anil Ambani, and Aditya Birla Nuvo, part of the diversified Birla conglomerate. Public sector entities like Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and the postal department too have applied for licences. In February, the RBI issued guidelines to allow corporate houses to set up banks, part of an effort to expand access to financial services in a country where only about half the population has a bank account. Licence winners are expected to be announced by the first quarter of 2014. RBI Governor D Subbarao had earlier said that "our effort will be to make that judgement as transparent as objective as contestable as possible...I want to say that not everybody who is fit and proper will be given a (bank) licence because we expect the number of eligible applicants will be much larger than what is meaningful number of licences we can give". In its clarification, the RBI had said the entities getting licences to open new banks will be given 18 months to open branches, and promoters would have to transfer their holdings to the non-operative financial holding company (NEWS

Muthoot Finance seeks licence to start a bank

July 1, 2013 | PTI

KOCHI: Gold loan company Muthoot Finance today said it has submitted an application to RBI for a licence to start a bank. "The application for a banking licence is indeed a major milestone for the Muthoot Group . With our last mile connect in to the rural hinterland, a banking license will enable us to play a larger role of financial inclusion by taking these services to the unbanked and underserved population of the country," ...

NOFHC) in a stipulated period.

NEWS

Risk to democracy: Business houses shoudn't get bank licences

July 5, 2013

By: Jaithirth Rao Dear Shri Subbarao, Mark Antony refers to Brutus and his friends as "honourable men. " In the same spirit, I would like to say that our major industrialists are all honourable men. But I would beg you not to grant banking licenses to these honourable persons. In the bastions of market capitalism - New York, London and Brussels, let alone in Dublin and Reykjavik - it has been established that hapless taxpayers will bail out banks irrespective of the...

RBI's new bank license norms: Now, corporates may vie for takeovers in banking sector
Suman Layak, ET Bureau Jun 30, 2013, 09.56AM IST

Tags:

the fray| Sunday ET| statutory liquidity ratio| Religare Enterprises| RBI| Non-banking Finance Companies| Nippon Life Insurance| NBFCs| Mahindra Financial Services|

India Post| India Infoline| Income Tax| government securities| Gold| Financial Services| finance| crr| corporate banking| Cash reserve ratio| bank licence| Aditya Birla Nuvo| Aditya Birla

(RBIs nod for bank)

The deadline is 24 hours away. By the end of day on July 1, some 40 applications of corporations seeking a banking licence are expected to reach the doorstep of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Only four or five are likely to get the go-ahead. The applicants still in the fray after the apex bank did its bit to clear ambiguities with 124 pages of answers to 422 qu estions in the first week of June are hopeful. A few, like Mahindra Financial Services and Sundaram Finance, decided to walk away after they felt the regulations were not suited to their aspirations.

How will RBI select entities for new bank licence

he long wait for banking licences ended last week and now all eyes on how the Reserve Bank of

India will select candidates for new banking licences. The market is rife with guesses. The stock market has been playing stocks up and down.

26 candidates , comprising Non Banking Finance Companies (NBFCs), corporate house, government entities and broking companies have applied for banking licences. Most experts are pinning hopes on NBFCs and government entities with significant penetration in rural areas to win the banking licences.

CNBC-TV18's Latha Venkatesh in conversation with three independent experts R Jagannathan, the Editor Firstpost, Haseeb Drabu former chairman J&K Bank and former editor Business Standard and a columnist with Livemint, and B D Narang former chairman of Oriental Bank of Commerce and now director of many companies discusses these different categories of candidates that have applied for bank licence and who among them are most likely to achieve it.

While NBFCs were preferred by all three experts as it would be a natural evolution for them, Narang preferred government entities like India Post and LIC Housing Finance due to there extensive reach and inclusive work across India.

Drabu gave the least priority to corporate due to conflict of interest. "Big businesses should be kept out. There is always a conflict of business. Howsoever Chinese walls you create, they know how to break it and pierce through them," Narang commented.