'SBI cleared $1 bn in five minutes'

Claiming that no bank in the world could match it in quick decision making, State Bank of India today said it cleared a $1 billion dollar loan for the Tatas in just five minutes "" a philosophy that has put it much ahead of competitors on overseas mergers and acquisitions deals.

"SBI has become so nimble that when Tata-Corus did not get that last bit of $1 billion funding, we sanctioned in five minutes. Recently, we have done Rs 12,000 crore. No bank in the world can do this kind of funding in 5-10 minutes. We have been doing it," SBI Chairman O P Bhatt said.

SBI, which has evinced interest in overseas acquisition of a big entity, is already the highest contributor on foreign asset building and M&A during the first quarter this year and would remain so in the next quarter too.

Asked if he feared that the fast growing private lender ICICI Bank could replace it as the top player in the arena, Bhatt said: "I am not apprehensive about the rise of the ICICI Bank... its CEO K V Kamath has gone on record that he is not competing with SBI and that he does not want to overtake SBI. He is the same person who was saying that he will overtake SBI."

On reports that ICICI had overtaken the public sector lender on foreign asset building recently, Bhatt asserted that SBI was ahead of the competitors.

"Even in terms of foreign assets ICICI Bank has not overtaken us. It has not overtaken in absolute terms but in percentage terms," he added.

Referring to the slew of measures taken by SBI during his tenure as chairman, Bhatt said: "As such we are the market leaders and the latest initiatives would only enhance our leadership position. Till sometime back, people did not know we were in this business (M&A deals). Now they know and are coming to us for their funding requirements."

The bank, which boasts of the largest network of branches in India, said it was ahead of any other institution in the country in terms of funding for infrastructure sector. SBI has so far sanctioned in excess of Rs 38,000 crore, he said.

"We are larger than any other bank or financial institution, including IDFC, which was especially created for infrastructure funding. There also we are playing the lead role and would like to continue as the leader," he said.

When asked about raising funds for infrastructure finance, Bhatt said raising money for infrastructure projects was not going to be a problem even when the requirement is over $ 500 billion dollar in the next five years. The gestation period of infrastructure projects is long, generally over six-seven years, but there is no dearth of funds, he said.

Bhatt, however, sounded a word of caution, saying though liquidity would not be so much of an issue, funding to infrastructure projects could be constrained by prudential requirement.