Foreign Banks in India: Looking cheerful again

While Global results did temper Indian ambitions at HSBC and StanChart, tidbits confirmed from last month and anew show the magnetic pull of a 7% growth for India as the baseline factor.

1. HSBC is recruiting heavily in India(HT). With 50 branches and a retail operation that is almost profitable, HSBC plans to continue expanding its India footprint to a $1 bln profit by 2013. This 6 months saw it make $394 mln in Corp Advances and $451 mln overall in India, incl Investment Banking and Asset Management, no mean feat and Stuart Davies has a hard time recruiting enough, confusing watchers who probably just left the bank and more..

2. SBI’s results have been noted and HSBC Global has already put out a buy on the stock, raising its target to 2600(ET)

2b. Citibank is restarting its unsecured lending business in the country while HSBC continues to be careful in retail assets given large NPAs(BS) India’s Private Banks hope to restart the competition in the space with Axis Bank going after existing customers and HDFC Bank increasing the share of new customers to 25%

3. Emerging market funds see most outflow again for the third week and Paulson got out of more than 50% of his BofA and Citi holdings in June according to his 13F filings. All hedge funds filed their 13F and see idf we have the right analysis in quick time at advantages.us

4. Of the $3.2 bln leaving Emrg Market Funds $2.9 bln came from Asia ex Japan funds. Also in the first half of August FIIs have sold INR 53 bln in Indian equities Emrg Funds saw outflows of $14 bln  in total in 2011(DNA)

5. StanChart PE is investing a good $250 mln in MSM, 60% owners of Sony, SET MAX and SAB channels. StanChart PE is buyin g stakes of opvt investors including Jackie Shroff, Sudesh Iyer and Rakesh Aggarwal – and infuse fresh capital into the company. (TOI)StanChart profits in India fell 39 %in the first half

6. StanChart Economic Research  in general has committed to using the Dollar forty rule from the looks oof it committing rupee to an appreciation cycle till 2013(Kudos to me-self at the the Banking Intiiative). Equating Dollar to Forty rupees is uplifting, simpler and generally true for all investments spanning till 2014 and more

7. The New Private and Wealth head, Ananth Narayana at Standard Chartered confirmed his faith in the Indian Economy’s restrained performance being in a select band as repeated by many network commentators throughout the day today

8. He and other commentators also mentioned a pause in RBI September 16th policy, quite some noise on that. I would not mind another two rate increases. Been there India. And we will never outperform anything anyway, might as well not stay a lossmaking enterprise

9. ING Vysya raised rates a day after RBI announcement and HDFC Bank upped policy rates by 50 bps today in response to the RBI hike

10. SBI and ICICI Bank also upped rates by 50 basis points today, ICICI Bank’s base rate now a round 10%. While ICICI Bank improved profits year on year, SBI managed to increase margins, with NIMs improving to a never before 3.89% on a Rs 8 tln book

11. Indian Mid Cap Bank, Axis Bank is raising equity & debt from Foreign investors, with IFC chipping in a $100 mln

12. Citi India is ramping up its FICC and equities trading teams in India according to CEO Pankaj Vaish last week(IBN)

The key appointments include those of Rohit Dusad, who joins from JP Morgan as director of origination in credit markets trading; Aditya Bagree, who joins from Nomura as director of credit structuring; and Chintan Shah from Morgan Stanley, who joins as Vice-President for credit trading. In the past three years, Citi has helped raise close to USD 60 billion from capital markets for its Indian clients and advised on nearly USD 25 billion of India-related mergers and acquisitions, the American banking giant said.

13. Indian M&A scene has lit up Asia pacific, with Asia ex Japan reporting a renewed $270 bln in deals year to date (only M&A) out of which India has reported more than 10% at $26.9 bln

14. India’s foreign debt? India owes INR 4.17 tln ($105 bln) of which $66bln is interest. Look at this piece on delusions and economic fallacies