ICICI Bank prunes equity investment in two overseas arms to half

Mumbai: ICICI Bank has more than halved its equity investment in the two arms in Canada and the UK to 5.2 percent at the end of September quarter from 11 percent as of March 2010. [caption id=“attachment_1087365” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] ICICI Bank has close to a quarter of its assets of Rs 4,09,700 crore with two overseas subsidiaries - ICICI Bank UK and ICICI Bank Canada. Currency fluctuation impacted bottom lines of its both subsidiaries with the Canadian arm reporting a sharp decline and the British unit turning in a marginal increase in profit, despite the fact that bank could manage higher net interest margin from them at 2 percent, up 12 basis points from a year ago. Of the total loan book of Rs 4,09,700 crore at the reporting quarter, these two subsidiaries contributed 23.4 percent, down from 25.7 percent in the year-ago period when its total assets stood at Rs 3,61,800 crore, the bank said. In the first quarter of the current fiscal year, the share was 24.2 percent of Rs 3,99,700 crore. The bank’s total equity investment in ICICI Bank UK and ICICI Bank Canada has come down from 11 percent of its net worth as of March 2010 to 5.2 percent as of September 2015, chief financial officer N S Kannan told investors and analysts at a customary post-earnings conference call on Friday evening. ICICI Bank Canada’s net profit fell to 6.6 million Canadian dollars from 9.2 million dollars a year ago and 7.8 million Canadian dollars in Q1 of the current year. However, its assets rose to 6.47 billion Canadian dollars during the reporting quarter from 5.90 billion in Q1. Loans and advances rose to 5.61 billion Canadian dollars compared to 5.21 billion in Q1, he said. Mr Kannan attributed the rise in loans and advances to higher securitised insured mortgages and the impact of the fall of the Canadian dollar against the US dollar. The capital adequacy ratio for ICICI Bank Canada stood at 25.1 percent, he added. However, net profit from ICICI Bank UK inched up marginally to $0.6 million from $5.1 million a year ago and from $0.5 million in Q1. Total assets rose to $4.64 billion from $4.19 billion. Loans and advances rose to $3.20 billion from $2.93 billion in Q1. Kannan said the loan growth was primarily due to granular lending to well-rated multinational corporations and select local market corporates and subsidiaries and joint ventures of Indian companies. “The lower profit from the British subsidiary in the reporting quarter was on account of higher provisions on existing impaired loans,” Mr Kannan said, adding that the capital adequacy ratio stood at 16.3 percent. PTI