Mumbai: State Bank of India Ltd (SBI) is holding talks with private equity funds to sell as much as 5% in SBI Life Insurance Co. Ltd, said three people aware of the development, including an SBI official.

The names of the private equity funds the bank has approached could not be immediately ascertained.

Mumbai: State Bank of India chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya, who was due to retire on 6 October, has received a year’s extension, said a SBI official from the chairman’s office on the condition of anonymity .

The move comes at a time when the country’s largest bank is set to merge its associate banks and Bharatiya Mahila Bank with itself.

The integration of IT backbone, a key component in the merger of State Bank of India (SBI) with six other smaller banks, will be completed by the end of this December — well before the March 31, 2017, target for full-fledged amalgamation, a top official has said.

“We have already started the IT integration with our five associate banks and Bharatiya Mahila Bank. We are in readiness. This will get over by the end of the current year,” said SBI Chief Information Officer and Deputy Managing Director D. Mrutyunjay Mahapatra.

State Bank of India chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya on Monday said non-performing assets (NPAs) in banks will reduce as demand returns in the economy and capital utilisation by industrial units increases.

In spite of consumer inflation falling to a five month low of 5.05% (y-o-y) in August, with State Bank of India dropping deposit rates further, real interest rates are now well and truly in negative territory, reports Shakti Patra in Mumbai. SBI has lowered deposit rates from September 1 and offers just 7.15% for one year money which, after a 30% tax rate, yields just 5%.

In view of rising non-performing assets (NPAs) in the corporate sector, State Bank of India (SBI) has moved towards a projected-cash-flow financing from the earlier practice of balance-sheet financing.

“We have moved to cash-flow financing from balance-sheet funding,” said Rajnish Kumar, managing director, SBI.

New York: India’s top women bankers, State Bank of India chief Arundhati Bhattacharya, ICICI Bank head Chanda Kochhar and Axis Bank CEO Shikha Sharma, are among the 50 most powerful women based outside the US, according to a list by Fortune which is topped by Banco Santander’s boss Ana Botín.

Bhattacharya, 60, is ranked second on the list, while Kochhar comes in on the fifth spot and Sharma on the 19th position in the Fortune’s ‘50 Most Powerful Women International’ list, which has ranked the women based outside the US.

In a digital initiative by State Bank of India subsidiary SBICAP Securities launched an upgraded version of its online trading platform - sbismart.com on Friday. The new HTML5 platform will be accessible across all devices such as smart phones, tablets and desktops.

The platform also offers customers other products and services, such as home and car loans apart from guides and educational content for investors.

Welcoming the recent steps taken by the Reserve Bank to develop a vibrant corporate bond market, SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya said there is a need to develop a secondary market for lower-rated papers for the market as a whole to gain traction.

"The only problem that remains is the fact that this market is only open to higher-rated corporates. It is not yet accessible to people with lower ratings," she told reporters on the sidelines of a SBI Caps Securities event.

Banking stocks continued to gain ground on Wednesday, with the Nifty Bank index hitting a high of 20,575.80 in intra-day deals on the National Stock Exchange (NSE). Top gainers include Federal Bank, IndusInd Bank, Bank of India, HDFC Bank, State Bank of India (SBI) and Axis Bank that hit their respective 52-week high levels.

Nifty PSU Bank index was the largest gainer among sectoral indices, up 0.7% at 10am. By comparison, the benchmark index, the Nifty 50 was trading 0.1% lower at 8,930 levels.

Inviting Real Estate Agents, Job Placements Agents, Educational Institutes, Software Service Providers, Real Estate Builders, Marriage Bureaus, Travel Agents, Restaurant Owners, Health & Fitness Centers and other Local Businesses to Post a FREE Classified Advertisement on Cootera.com Classifieds Website.