Financial services provider Edelweiss Capital today said it is open to acquisitions in retail broking and mutual funds businesses and is awaiting RBI's guidelines on new licences to firm up a view on entering the banking sector.
"We are looking at acquisitions in both our retail broking and asset management businesses in order to scale up operations. We have, however, not identified any target as yet," Edelweiss Capital Chairman Rashesh Shah told reporters during a conference call here.
On retail broking, he said the company would find "ideal" any brokerage that has a customer base of between 50,000 and 1,00,000.
The Edelweiss Group is also interested in entering the banking business, he said.
"Our view is that we will wait for the banking guidelines and (then) evaluate that business. Currently, we have so many things are on our hand, with insurance and housing finance and all that we don't have the management bandwidth to expand further. But we will evaluate (the banking foray) after the RBI announces its banking guidelines," he said.
The Group today reported a dip of 17.22% in consolidated net profit at Rs 43.26 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31 as against Rs 52.26 crore in the year-ago period.
Income from operations increased to Rs 380.01 crore in the January-March quarter from Rs 259.49 crore in the same period an year ago.
However, in FY11, the net profit of the company rose to Rs 233.02 crore from Rs 229.16 crore in the last fiscal.
"We have invested a lot and so our profit has not grown strongly. Investment in our retail business, our insurance business, and infrastructure like our office, if we add it comes to almost Rs 50 crore of hit that we have taken on our PAT (profit after tax)," Shah said, adding, the company will continue to invest in its businesses.
"Housing finance, insurance and asset management are the three growth areas for us," he said.
Edelweiss expects to start its insurance business by July and is hoping to get Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority's approval for the products it had filed for within the next four weeks. It has already obtained the regulator's approval to start the life insurance business.
On its capital markets business, Shah said it is proposed to rename Edelweiss Capital as Edelweiss Financial Services to reflect the diversified nature of business -- capital markets, asset management, housing finance, advisory services and insurance.
Shares of the company closed at Rs 34, up 1.04% from the previous close, on the BSE.
