Banking On India ; While Financial Services Giants Have Posted Huge Losses Overseas, They Are Either Making Substantial Profits or Planning Ambitious Expansions in India.

Summary

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Last year marked the most disastrous period for financial institutions in history. The subprime crisis not only felled blue- chip firms such as Lehman Brothers but caused staggering losses for others such as AIG and Citigroup. Then came the economic slowdown. Now, banks in Europe and the US are finding it increasingly tough to generate income when companies across the board are cutting jobs and slowing production.

Still, while business has braked overseas, India has become a beehive of activity. Some foreign banks have increased their advance- tax payments significantly, signalling a solidly profitable quarter for their India operations. A few have even managed to make tidy sums through their investment-banking services. Most significantly, despite the slowdown, many of the major foreign players in India are expanding their retail operations and some have even made sizable private-equity investments in Indian companies.

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Extract

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Banking On India ; While Financial Services Giants Have Posted Huge Losses Overseas, They Are Either Making Substantial Profits or Planning Ambitious Expansions in India.

Banks such as HSBC, Citigroup and UBS may have bled a lot of money overseas, but their advance-tax payments against accruing profits in India which have increased at least 90 per cent on average are a good indicator of how well their businesses are doing here. According to market sourc...

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