Union Bank moves ahead on acquisition plan

The public sector Union Bank of India (UBI) planned to acquire new banks and had held discussions with some merchant banks, a top bank official has said.

Though UBI had not yet identified any banks for takeover, talks had been held with some merchant banks, bank's executive director K Ratnakar Hegde told reporters here last night.

"Today what is being talked about is merger of strong banks. It is purely dependent on availability and no timeframe has been fixed for mergers or takeovers by the bank," he said.

The UBI, which does not have a presence abroad, was also keen to open branches in the gulf countries, especially due to the presence of a large non-resident Indian population.

The bank was targeting a profit of Rs 1,000 crore this fiscal, against last year's profit of Rs 700 crore.

To help the unemployed youth and women in rural areas, the bank had plans to open 11 more rural development and training institutes in the country.

While the first such centre was opened at Kothamangalam in Kerala's Ernakulam district two days ago, the next would be set up at Varanasi, he said.

Giving the current year's business figures, Hegde said the bank expects to touch a business (deposits and credits) worth Rs 1 lakh crore. It had already reached Rs 92,000 crore by September this year against last year's volumes of Rs 80,000 crore.

On the branch expansion plans, Hegde said during the current year 50 new branches and 100 kiosks with ATM facilities would be opened. The bank had at present 270 ATMs which would be increased to 500 by the end of this year. The bank's non-performing assets levels during March this year was 2.78 per cent against five per cent during the same period last year.

At present, it was 2.30 per cent, he said.

UBI has 2025 branches in the country with 1200 in rural and semi-urban areas. It has 365 networked branches and had plans to open 100 retail outlets in the country, Hegde said.

The bank had achieved a 30 per cent growth in the six months ending September this year against 20 per cent during the same period last year.