*Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd *may acquire *CitiFinancial Consumer Finance India *Ltd from *Citibank NA*.
Citi was rumoured to be exiting the personal loan business India in 2008, when the subprime crisis broke out in the US. CitiFinancial is a part of Citi Holdings. Kotak is said to be conducting due diligence on CitiFinancial’s assets. CitiFinancial has about 118 branches and 2,000 employees in its network, out of which 800 are certified professionals authorized to sell insurance products. This will increase Kotak’s retail reach beyond it 249 branches. Kotak can use these branches as a distribution setup CitiFinancial has been reeling under bad loans and lossess since 2007. The losses largely accrued because of higher NPA and below par asset quality in unsecured personal loans. CitiFinancial reported a net loss of Rs.729 crore in fiscal 2009 against a profit of Rs.19 crore in the previous year. The management has also cut the branch network from 450 to around 118, retrenched at least 400. Citi has infused $200 mn (Rs.900 crore) in the past two years to absorb the losses and cleaned up the balance sheet. -- Regards Hardik Shah -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""GLOBAL SPECULATORS"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalspeculators?hl=en.
