Most foreign bankers are impatient with the RBI's 2009 roadmap for bank consolidation, but Sir Thomas Harris, StanChart vice chairman is much more bullish.
He can afford to be: With 81 branches in India and a 150 year-old first mover advantage going back 150 years, it's easy to see why. And StanChart has already started making small acquisitions.
The latest is a plan to acquire the Indian operations of the Bank of Bahrain & Kuwait. An MoU to this effect was signed in June 2005, but a binding agreement only came through in last week of February 2006.
Stanchart will acquire both BB&K's branches in India, one in Mumbai, the other in Hyderabad. But the acquisition is subject to regulatory approval.
"I'm not sure whether it's public knowledge or not but it's a small acquisition of a couple of branches of a bank from the Gulf, which we're in the process of buying but it's small. I don't want to exaggerate the scale of it," Sir Thomas Harris, Vice Chairman, Standard Chartered Capital Markets Limited, told Profit.
But all the pieces are beginning to fall into place: Modest buy-outs like Sumitomo Bank in 2004 and now Bank of Bahrain are part of a larger plan.
Stanchart's primary objective is still organic growth, more branches, more business lines, and with an internal bechmark of 400 branches in Korea India's tally of 81 still leaves Stanchart with lots of room to grow.
An NDTV Profit Exclusive for Business Standard.
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