No exposure to sub-prime credit market: PSBs

Even as country's largest private lender ICICI Bank reported a Rs 280-crore mark-to-market additional provisioning to cover investments in Credit derivatives, public sector banks seems to be less worried as they do not have large exposures.

Among PSBs, State Bank of India (SBI) is understood to have the largest exposure - about $700 million - to credit-Linked Notes (CLNs), issued on behalf of Indian corporates. SBI is followed by Bank of India ($400 mn) and Bank of Baroda ($329 mn).

While SBI officials declined to comment on the provisioning on account of its ongoing rights issue, BoI and BoB said they have made additional provisions of Rs 4.20 crore and Rs 10 crore, respectively, to cover the CLN exposure.

However, the banks would not term these provisions as "losses in sub-prime market" as the CLNs and Credit Default Swaps (CDS) have been issued to established Indian corporates, having high borrower quality.

"No (Indian) public sector banks has exposure to the sub-prime credit market. Issuing CLNs are a part of the treasury operations carried out by banks to achieve good revenues. Since these are issued on behalf of established Indian corporates, these are secure investments to a large extent," Indian Banks Association Chairman and Canara Bank Chairman, M B N Rao, told PTI.