Canara Bank to foray into US market with an office in New York, to open more foreign branches

Canara Bank CMD RK Dubey

PUBLIC sector lender Canara Bank is all set to foray into the US market with the opening of a branch in New York soon. Canara bank on Monday said it will soon open a branch in New York and the state-owned bank has already received...

regulatory clearances from the US authorities. This was stated by Canara Bank executive director AK Gupta on the sidelines of an event organised by PHD in New Delhi. He said, "We have got regulatory permission from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and we will be opening branch in New York very soon."

The Bangalore-headquartered bank is also looking at Dubai, Tokyo, Frankfurt (Germany) and Qatar for opening offices. At present, Canara Bank has five overseas branches at London, Leicester, Shanghai, Manama and Hong Kong. Talking about resource mobilisation, he said the bank has last month raised Rs 1,500 crore from bonds to increase its capital base.

This would be over and above Rs 500 crore that the government has already decided to infuse in the bank before March 2014. Capital infusion by the government has been done with the twin objective of adequately meeting the credit requirement of the productive sectors as well as to maintain regulatory capital adequacy ratios in public sector banks (PSBs).

As at June 2013, the Bank has further expanded its domestic presence, with 3765 branches spread across all geographical segments. Keeping customer convenience at the forefront, the Bank provides a wide array of alternative delivery channels that include over 3754 ATMs, covering 1431 centres.

The bank established its international division in 1976 to supervise the functioning of its various foreign departments, to give required thrust to foreign exchange business, particularly exports and to meet the requirements of NRIs. India’s largest public sector lender SBI has the maximum overseas branches with presence across all time zones through 190 foreign offices in 35 countries. Banks such as Punjab National Bank, Allahabad Bank also have footprints abroad and gradually Indian state-owned banks are making foreign forays.