by admin | May 25, 2021 | Banking, Corporate, Corporate finance, Economy, Finance, News
Mumbai : Hours after an official of securities market regulator SEBI said that ICICI Bank has filed for settlement through consent mechanism, the private lender denied filing any such application.
The company, however, said that it has submitted its response to the show cause notice issued by SEBI.
“We have submitted our response to the show cause notice issued by SEBI. We would like to clarify that we have not filed any application for settlement,” ICICI Bank said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, answering questions on the issue after SEBI’s annual board meet, SEBI chief Ajay Tyagi said: “On the ICICI (issue), to my information some reply has come from the bank and the earlier CEO (Kochhar), so, we will examine that…”
On the plea for settlement through consent mechanism, Tyagi claimed ignorance. However, another SEBI official present at the conference confirmed the request.
The stock market regulator provides for an out-of-the-court settlement procedure to settle cases — consent mechanism — which does not warrant admission or denial of the alleged wrongdoing.
SEBI had issued a show cause notice to ICICI Bank and its MD and CEO Kochhar regarding conflict of interest in lending to Videocon Group, which has had business tie-ups with her husband Deepak Kochhar.
Currently, former Supreme Court judge B.N. Srikrishna (Retd) is heading an independent enquiry into the allegations.
The bank on May 30 announced that its Board has decided to institute a “comprehensive enquiry” to look into an anonymous whistleblower’s complaint alleging that Kochhar had not adhered to provisions relating to “code of conduct” of the bank.
In June, Kochhar decided to proceed on leave and subsequently, Sandeep Bakhshi was appointed as the wholetime Director and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the bank.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Banking, Corporate, Corporate finance, News
Mumbai : Lending major ICICI Bank on Tuesday said it has successfully on-boarded over 250 corporates on its blockchain platform for domestic and international trade finance transactions.
The private sector bank said that with this, leading Indian corporates — including ones from the “S&P BSE 100 Index” — are now undertaking domestic/international trade finance transactions on its custom-made blockchain platform.
“This initiative marks another milestone in the bank’s pioneering role to promote blockchain in the banking industry in the country,” the bank said in a statement.
The statement said in August 2016, ICICI Bank became the first bank in the country and among the first few globally to successfully undertake pilot transactions in international trade finance and remittance in partnership with Emirates NBD.
“Since then, more than 250 corporates, including the country’s leading companies, have signed up on the bank’s blockchain application to experience a more time and cost efficient and secure way of undertaking domestic and international trade transactions,” it added.
According to the lending major, several Indian corporates have undertaken trade finance transactions of various types — that include cross-border remittance for salary payment to employees of a group company of an organisation, domestic vendor payments in another city and payments for raw materials to a domestic channel partner among many others — through the banks’s blockchain platform.
“We were the first in the country and among few globally to pioneer cross-border open account trade finance and remittance transactions on blockchain… I envision that the emerging technology of blockchain holds an immense potential to simplify the document-intensive trade transactions by bringing all stakeholders on a single platform,” said Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO, ICICI Bank.
“In another initiative, we are also collaborating with peer banks and other partners to create a comprehensive ecosystem in the industry using blockchain and evolve common working standards to contribute to even greater adoption of this initiative,” she said.
The statement said the bank’s blockchain application digitises the paper-intensive international trade finance process as an electronic, distributed and unalterable ledger, and gives the participating entities including banks the ability to access a single source of information.
“It enables all the parties — buyers and sellers — across domestic and international locations, all branches and locations of ICICI Bank in the country and overseas, to view the data in real time,” said the statement.
“It also allows them to track documentation and authenticate ownership of assets digitally and execute a trade finance transaction through a series of encrypted and secure digital contracts,” it said.
Further, it allows each participant to check online the status of the application and transmission of original trade documents through a secure network, the statement added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Banking, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, News
Injeti Srinivas
New Delhi : No reference has been made to the Union Corporate Affairs Ministry by its Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) on the issue involving the private sector ICICI Bank and Videocon Group, its Secretary Injeti Srinivas said on Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters here on the sidelines of a conference on Resolving Insolvency organised by industry chamber CII, Srinivas, however, also said that it is well within the rights of the SFIO to make a reference on the matter.
“If the SFIO considers it necessary to make a reference to the ministry, it is well within its ambit,” he said, adding that no such reference had been made to the ministry.
Officials here said on Tuesday that the Income Tax Department has issued a notice to Deepak Kochhar, the husband of ICICI Bank Chief Executive Chanda Kochhar, in connection with its ongoing tax evasion probe in the Videocon bank loan case.
He has been named by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in its preliminary enquiry registered last week and the agency had also questioned a few ICICI bank officials as part of the probe to find if any quid pro quo was involved in the bank issuing a Rs 3,250 crore loan to the Videocon Group in 2012.
The deal recently made news after reports questioned the loan and linked it to a possible quid pro quo that Videocon group promoter Venugopal Dhoot allegedly had with NuPower Renewables, a company founded by Deepak Kochhar.
In its preliminary enquiry — a precursor before lodging an FIR — the CBI had named Dhoot, Deepak Kochhar and unidentified others.
In his address at the conference earlier, Srinivas, who heads the Insolvency Law Committee, that made public its recommendations on Tuesday, said that Less than half of the staggering Rs 9 lakh crore worth of non-performing assets (NPAs), or bad loans, accumulated by banks had returned due to the system set in place by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code enacted by Parliament in 2016.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Banking, Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Economy, Large Enterprise, Markets, News
New Delhi : Leading cab aggregator Ola and ICICI Bank on Tuesday signed a MoU to bring forth a range of integrated offers for their customers and driver partners.
“This alliance will provide increased convenience to customers on both the platforms as well as hundreds of thousands of driver partners,” Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-Founder and CEO of Ola, said in a statement.
Through this alliance, both brands will bring together their respective technology platforms to offer Ola booking facility on ICICI Bank’s mobile banking platforms.
It will enable ICICI Bank customers to seamlessly book an Ola and pay the fare by using the bank’s mobile banking applications; ‘iMobile’ and ‘Pockets’.
“From API (application program interface) integration, to launching new products and solutions tailored to suit our common pool of millions of customers, the two brands will capitalise on each other’s strengths to deliver superior experience and enable smart, sustainable and inclusive mobility for India,” added Aggarwal.
It will also give access to instant small ticket digital credit. This facility will help Ola customers to get small ticket digital credit instantaneously from ICICI Bank, on the Ola Platform.
The digital credit will be available on the basis of a real-time credit assessment algorithm created by the bank.
ICICI Bank will offer a ‘Pay Direct’ card for Ola’s driver partners where Ola’s auto and cab driver partners will be able to get their daily earnings directly into their ‘Pay Direct’ card accounts.
Additionally, drivers can also swipe this card at merchant outlets for their purchases.
“We are delighted to partner with Ola to introduce a range of new integrated offerings that will deliver unparalleled convenience for customers as well as Ola’s driver partners,” added Anup Bagchi, Executive Director, ICICI Bank.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Banking, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Economy, Markets, News
New Delhi/Mumbai/Chennai/Kolkata : Banking operations across the country were hit on Tuesday as over 10 lakh bank employees in more than 1,30,000 branches pan-India struck work — protesting against reforms in the banking sector among other issues — thereby affecting cheque-clearing activity. However, private lenders like ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank functioned normally.
An official of the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) — the umbrella body of nine unions which has given the strike call — said “over 10 lakh bank employees spread in more than 1,30,000 branches across the country struck work hitting cheque-clearing activity”.
Most public sector bank branches visited by IANS correspondents had their shutters down.
Banking operations in Tamil Nadu were affected with around 55,000 bankers striking work pressing for their demands, said a report from Chennai citing a top All India Bank Employees’ Association (AIBEA) leader.
“The strike is a huge success. It is a dawn-to-dusk strike as cheque clearing operations start at 6 a.m. Bankers working in around 10,300 branches struck work protesting the policies towards the sector,” AIBEA General Secretary C.H. Venkatachalam told IANS.
Venkatachalam said around 12 lakh financial instruments valued at around Rs 7,300 crore could not be cleared.
Government treasury transactions were impacted. Foreign exchange transactions, import and export bill transactions and sanction of loans, among others, were also affected.
In most of the places, clearing operations, particularly outward clearing, was seriously affected.
Around 42,000 bank employees and officers from Maharashtra joined their colleagues in the daylong nationwide strike, with plans to intensify the agitation, a top official said.
“The strike was a total success in Maharashtra. No banking transactions could be carried out in any bank branches, cheques clearing operations were completely paralysed. Bank ATMs which worked for a couple of hours initially also could not dispense cash later,” said UFBU Convenor Devidas Tuljapurkar.
The strike hit around 42,000 branches of 22 public sector banks including the monolithic State Bank Of India and IDBI, 18 old generation banks, eight foreign banks and 56 Regional Rural Banks in Mumbai and Maharashtra, said AIBEA leader Vishwas Utagi.
Tuljapurkar said the strike was to oppose banks privatisation, banks consolidation and for initiating tough measures against big corporate loan defaulters, besides opposing the increase in service charges and reduction in interest rates on saving accounts by banks, which is an attempt to shift the burden of big loan defaulters onto the common masses.
Several thousand bank employees staged a rally at Azad Maidan in Mumbai which was addressed by leaders of UFBU and its nine affiliated unions.
Discussing plans to intensify the agitation, Tuljapurkar said the bank staffers will now join a march to Parliament on September 15, followed by another two days’ strike in late October-early November.
The strike comes after the talks between UFBU on one side and Indian Banks’ Association, Chief Labour Commissioner and Department of Financial Services (DFS) failed on Friday.
“All India State Bank Officers’ Federation and All India State Bank of India Staff Federation, being part of the UFBU, will participate in the strike. It is likely that our bank will also be impacted by the strike,” State Bank of India (SBI) earlier said in a regulatory filing in the BSE.
Among the 17-point charter of union demands, the main relates to the government’s denial of adequate capital to public sector banks, thus creating conditions for privatisation, an AIBEA statement said on Tuesday.
“The one-day banking strike has been successful as close to 9,500 ATMs and around 3,000 branches are closed with 70,000-100,000 bank employees participating in the protest in West Bengal,” AIBEA’s (West Bengal) General Secretary Rajen Nagar said in Kolkata.
All India Bank Officers’ Association’s (West Bengal) General Secretary Sanjay Das said employees and officers from cooperative and grameen banks including regional rural banks also participated in the strike and private banks’ branches were mostly closed as their employees supported unions’ demand.
“The strike is 100 per cent successful. Bank employees and officers are conducting demonstration in front of banks’ branches and ATMs,” Das said.
Thousands of employees of state-run banks began day-long strike in cities and towns across Karnataka, affecting cash and other transactions for the day, said a report from Bengaluru.
“We have received an overwhelming response from all our members for the strike call in support of our demands, including our opposition to the merger of state-run banks,” state AIBOC General Secretary A.N.K. Murthy told IANS.
In Bengaluru, hundreds of employees of various banks took out a rally and staged demonstrations protesting against the government’s proposal to merge their banks.
Private banks, including ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and Kotak Mahindra, however, opened for business as usual
Banking services were badly affected in the Left-ruled Tripura on Tuesday as most of the major banks remained closed due to the nation-wide employees’ strike.
The striking employees were also demanding compensation to employees for extra work done on account of demonetisation of high value currencies, and booking loan defaulters.
According to Nikhil Das, a leader of the striking employees, around 3,000 bank employees belonging to about 414 branches of 15 nationalised, regional, rural and cooperative banks in the northeastern state took part in the strike in Tripura.
While banking operations across Kerala were hit by Tuesday’s strike, new generation banks were reported to be functioning normally. There were sizeable crowds in front of many ATMs and at some of these, the cash finished by noon. The worst affected were cheque clearing operations.
—IANS
