Monday, August 12, 2013

SBI Chairman Speaks Truth on Bad Debts but Not On Root Causes

After the declaration of quarterly result and announcement of 14% dip in profit accompanied by phenomenal increase in Non Performing Assets he has openly admitted that chances of NPA coming down are not bright. Most of the banks have failed to contain NPA despite several advises from Ministry of Finance though all of them say YES to all what FM says during their meetings with FM. Thanks to SBI Chairman Mr. Choudhury who has at least the guts to speak the truth.

Chairman and Managing Directors CMD and Executive Directors EDs of other public sector banks are ready to sell their respective bank or spoil the bank's future if Finance Minister or any minister advises to do anything right or wrong. CMDs of the bank are more interested in their personal career and hence blindly indulged in flattery,sycophancy and yesmanism. Such men cannot protect the interest of the bank. They promote flattery and bribery culture down the line in their bank; they give elevation to officers in career only if their subordinate officers are number one flattery as happens in other government departments and party politics. This is why I usually say that public sector banks cannot rise until top officials are punished for their faults.

If CMD or ED of any bank fail to achieve the target, if they fail to stop rising NPA and contain NPA to desired level or they fail to increase Net interest income or they fail to achieve business target and so on, their non performance or in effectiveness is not a big thing in the eyes of FM or any minister or any RBI official provided the person is ready to say YES to all what ministers say. Global recession or natural calamity or economic slowdown is blamed and accepted as valid excuse for their failure, for all their lapses and for all their ineffectiveness and corrupt practices.

On the other hand junior level officers are used as scapegoat for all their faults, juniors are transferred as per their whims and rejected in promotion processes absolutely as per their whims and fancies. It is only in government banks that merit is never given weight, where performer is never promoted and corrupt officers are never punished. It is possible only in banks where flattery and bribery are deciding factor in most of the cases of recruitment , promotion, posting and lending decisions barring a few exceptional cases of honesty and performance.

Otherwise it is often seen in public sector undertakings that a person who is star performer in the eyes of his appraiser is later found to be the most corrupt and most non performing and negligent officer by his successor if at all he is honest and loyal to the bank or by a minister who is found to be loyal to the Nation. Only in the past it is found that Mr. O P Bhatt SBI Chairman was considered as ICON in banking industry was proved bad by his successor who declared his all bad assets. 

Though Present Chairman of SBI is bad in the eyes of FM due to rise in Gross Non Performing Assets in SBI but all bad assets are (though declared as bad by SBI by present Chairman) are actually created by his predecessors only. Similar is the cases with so many CMDs of other bank who were or who are considered as Star Performer by the then Finance Minister were /are later proved spoiler of their bank. If we go down the line in bank it will be found that officers who was the most corrupt and who was responsible for most of bad debts got easy promotions and only his successor faced the music for faults committed by his predecessors. I do not want to name them because I know Ministers are also of almost same variety and it is rather they who promote the culture of bribery and flattery.

There is no doubt to me that actual health of all state run banks is bad and beyond control. NPA will move from 2 percent to 20 percent as I or any other prudent banker predicted years before.FM can at most go for merger and consolidation of banks to hide their evil works and to conceal their ill deeds.

Top bosses of banks who were considered as Champion of change management and who were awarded in the past for so called good performances got retired and now the real picture of their bank is emerging and getting exposed slowly and gradually. Unfortunately in all cases of bad results , present incumbent is rebuked and the real culprit goes unattended and unpunished.

Leaders who are well versed in delivery of good lectures and who are good aerator and who are good manipulators are liked by all who assets. There is none to assess the ground reality of the bank honestly and none is actually equipped enough to enable him assess the truth and speak the truth. Person who present the most shining and the rosiest picture in their Balance sheet as promoters of Satyam Computers did, are awarded for Good Corporate Governance.

In fact top officials are the real fraud masters and their masters are greater fraud perpetrators This is why a bank is awarded with more and more prizes is found in general to be most inefficient and most corrupt. This is tragedy of Indian bosses.


Award the most corrupt and punish the most honest persons like Khemka and like Ms Durga Nagpal is the Mantra of so called good government as also that of all so called star performing top bosses in public sector undertakings. All perches sermons to subordinates on reformation but in fact all promote deformation, damage and destruction.

Only the difference is that IAS officers like Mr. Khemka has the courage and caliber to prove their mentor  politicians wrong whereas honest and sincere Bank officers prefer keeping mum on reign of injustice .There are hundreds of honest and sincere officers and hard working clerks in banks who cannot become Yesman to their bosses  boycott promotion process and keep silent even if they are transferred to remote places by ill-motivated officers. 

Media men may take the case of Ms Durga Nagpal but they are often unaware of what is happening in a bank and what are the root causes of assets going bad .Media men are far away from dirty politics prevailing in government banks.They cannot understand how the best Human resource policies are misused by bankers for their personal gain due to secrecy culture of financial matters.

Chances of bad loans coming down 'not very bright': SBI Chairman Pratip Chaudhuri--ET 13th August 2013

Chances of bad loans and restructured assets coming down at State Bank of IndiaBSE -3.41 % (SBI), the country's largest lender, are "not very bright", Chairman Pratip Chaudhuri said on Monday. 

The bank earlier reported a second consecutive drop in quarterly net profit, missing estimates, on worsening asset quality, higher operating expenses and muted growth in interest income. 

United Bank Q1 net skids 74%

United Bank of India net profit dropped 74 per cent to Rs 44.73 crore in the first quarter of 2013-14 from Rs 173.89 crore in the corresponding year-ago quarter.
The total income stood at Rs 2,869 crore (Rs 2,499 crore), up 14.79 per cent year-on-year.
Net interest margin was down to 2.28 per cent (3.05 per cent). The bank’s capital adequacy ratio dropped to 10.82 per cent (12.5 per cent).
The bank on Monday said income from loans and advances grew to Rs 2463.74 crore from Rs 2283.81 crore in Q1 of FY13. Non-interest income moved up 88 per cent to 405.06 crore.
Net NPA was at Rs 2,699.59 crore and net the NPA ratio was 3.77 per cent. The bank in a statement said it made a cash recovery of Rs 65.38 crore and the outstanding restructured portfolio was placed at Rs 4,781 crore. It constituted 6.68 per cent of the total advances.
During the quarter, the bank opened 1.33 lakh basic savings and deposit accounts. It has also delivered 9.46 lakh smart cards to financial inclusion beneficiaries.

Strengthen inspection of units financed, FinMin tells banks--Business Line

K. RAM KUMAR

With public sector banks showing a marked increase in bad loans, the Finance Ministry has asked these banks to diligently conduct quarterly inspection of units/enterprises jointly financed by them.

This instruction is aimed at ensuring that the banks take corrective action to prevent slippages (deterioration in asset/loan quality) should they find anything amiss during the inspection.

The inspection conducted by banks, among others, entails audit of stocks/inventory and receivables; verification of stocks and debtors; and verification of collateral.

Banks undertake inspection to ensure that the money they lent is being used only for the intended (productive) purpose and not diverted to unrelated activities/businesses, said a senior public sector bank official.
The utility of the inspection exercise also lies in the fact that it can pinpoint improper credit appraisal and failure to exercise proper post-disbursement supervision.

PERFUNCTORY INSPECTION

As the situation obtains now, in the case of consortium lending, banks conduct quarterly inspection of units by rotation. Often, this inspection is conducted in a perfunctory manner, the banker said.

What usually happens is that inspectors of ‘B’ bank presume that their counterparts from ‘A’ bank would have done a thorough job in the previous quarter or the ones that follow in the next quarter will do a good job. So, complacency sets in and the inspection exercise gets diluted.

A consortium loan (generally, a big-ticket loan) is extended by two or more banks jointly to a borrower. This helps banks spread the risks and keep the exposure within the permissible limits.

The deterioration in the loan/asset quality is underscored by the fact that public sector banks’ gross non-performing assets to gross advances ratio rose to 3.8 per cent as on March-end 2013 (from 3.2 per cent as on March-end 2012).

Further, the restructured standard asset to gross advances ratio of PSBs jumped to 7.1 per cent (5.7 per cent).

For all banks, the average gross NPAs to gross advances ratio rose to 3.4 per cent as on March-end 2013 (from 2.9 per cent as on March-end 2012). Further, the restructured standard asset to gross advances ratio rose to 5.7 per cent (4.7 per cent).

RISK AVERSION

According to the Reserve Bank of India’s latest macroeconomic and monetary developments review, deterioration in both asset quality and in macroeconomic conditions has resulted in risk aversion in the banking sector.

Macro stress test of sectoral credit risk revealed that, among the selected seven sectors, construction and agriculture are expected to register the highest NPA ratios of 4.7-4.8 per cent by March 2014, followed by the iron and steel sector, the RBI said in its latest financial stability report.
The adverse macroeconomic shocks seem to be having maximum impact on iron and steel and construction followed by engineering.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/banking/strengthen-inspection-of-units-financed-finmin-tells-banks/article5012786.ece

Need to revamp corporate debt restructuring mechanism: Report--Et

MUMBAI: Banks may see some of their restructured assets turning into bad loans this fiscal with gross NPAs touching around 5 per cent of the system, which calls for an urgent need to revamp the corporate debt restructuring mechanism, according to a BCG-Ficci report.

"There is a possibility that 15-20 per cent of the restructured book may slip into non-performing assets (NPAs) by this fiscal, should the economy not improve and gross NPAs could reach close to 5 per cent," said the report titled 'Consistency, Quality and Resilience: The Next Frontier for Productivity Excellence'.

The report was released here on the eve of the national banking summit.

According to industry data, banks, led by state-run lenders, have cumulatively recast loan worth more than Rs 2.5 trillion under CDR mechanism while the total restructured loans stood at over Rs 4 trillion, as banks restructure loans outside CDR cell too.

In FY 2013, banks restructured Rs 75,000 crore loans under the CDR mechanism, which was nearly double the level in the previous fiscal.

The report said the banks need capability to do deeper strategic due diligence of problem accounts to locate tough management actions needed for turning around the restructured assets.

"Banks need to develop system and capabilities in strategic due diligence of restructuring applicants' business plan and a mechanism to maintain oversight of the restructured business," the report said.

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