T N Ninan: The third leg

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

Indian firms established themselves first in services like software and business process outsourcing, and now are doing so in manufacturing; indeed, some of the manufacturing giants are going global with a vengeance. What about the third leg of the stool, financial firms? Do they have a chance, too? It would seem that the odds are stacked against them, because the global firms are moving in to try and take over the market in India. First it was Merrill Lynch buying out Hemendra Kothari, now it is Morgan Stanley doing the same with Nimesh Kampani. (The third 'K' in this game""Kotak""happens to be Business Standard's largest shareholder, so it may be best to leave it out of the story!)

But just as trade follows the flag, finance follows companies. If the Indian market becomes big enough to spawn large financial firms, and if Indian companies go global, it would be entirely in pattern if Indian financial firms too went global. After all, the big banks and investment companies were British when that country ruled the world. Once the United States established its economic supremacy, the big American banks too began to go global""stepping into Europe in the 1980s and into Asia as recently as the 1990s. Japan at the height of its economic expansion and asset price inflation, in the 1980s, had the majority of the largest banks in the world, and Nomura, Nikko and the like became familiar names in Asia and elsewhere. Now it is China's turn. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) went public with a share issue late last year, and got an astonishing valuation. Its share price has moved up even further since then, and now it is valued more than Deutsche Bank, UBS and Goldman Sachs combined""quite apart from being worth much more than all of India's banks put together.

The problem in India is two-fold. First, the large bulk of Indian banking is in the public sector""zombie banks, in Percy Mistry's controversial phrasing. They have no significant presence at the competitive edge of knowledge-intensive banking, and are non-existent in the securities trading market as well. The result is that the natural candidates for 'national financial champion' (and we have seen that there is some scope for that role even in a competitive market situation) have been ruled out of the game. That leaves the big boys of the private sector: ICICI and HDFC Bank. Do they have it in them to follow the flag of Indian enterprise and take on the global giants in global financial markets? On present reckoning, in terms of the appetite for growth that is on display, ICICI seems the better candidate.

The second problem is that the Indian market is not big enough as yet to spawn an Indian ICBC. India's banking sector in relation to its GDP is unusually small; its stock market capitalisation has reached a respectable level but is nowhere near enough to be able to throw up global-scale financial powerhouses. But there is certainly room for optimism that this could change, if the GDP continues to grow at 8 per cent for the next decade. A large, domestic economy with a handful of strong financial players would set the base for one or two of them to launch themselves internationally.

What would also help is if Mumbai could in fact be made into a regional financial centre. London's Big Bang reform in the mid-1980s helped that city get much more of international business, and the London stock exchange prospered. Mumbai could do the same on a smaller scale, but the combination of civic problems and political attitudes to privatising banks will make sure that this does not happen. In other words, if an Indian financial firm is to make it big globally, it will have to hope that the Indian economy continues to do well, that Indian firms go global with a vengeance, and that most of these firms will prefer to deal with a financial entity that they are familiar and comfortable with back home.