Mumbai

Kotak Mahindra Bank, country’s fourth largest private sector lender, today said it plans to open a branch at the international finance centre (IFC) at the GIFT City in Gujarat.

“We’ve decided to take some space at the GIFT city. We believe that if you’re able to create an international financial centre in India, wherever it is, we’d like to have the option of participating in that,” its executive and vice chairman Uday Kotak told PTI here.

Kotak said the bank will be tracking developments on the regulatory and taxation fronts in its effort to start operations from the GIFT City near Ahmedabad, which is the country’s first IFC.

Though located physically in the country, an IFC is aimed at acting like a foreign operations office to facilitate easy movement of capital.

For banks, it helps having a presence because they can serve the foreign currency needs of their corporate clients through such a presence.

Many Indian banks already have a presence at a similar IFC in Dubai.

Kotak said developing an ecosystem beyond the regulatory and taxation fronts is also very important.

The Kotak Mahindra Group has a presence in New York, London, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Mauritius and Singapore, including representative offices and branches.

The bank had recently finished Rs 15,000 crore merger of south-focused ING Vysya Bank with it to become the fourth largest lender in private space.

The new shares created as part of the merger got listed today.

Shares of KMB were trading 2.33 per cent down at Rs 1,336.50 apiece on the BSE at 1300 hours, as against 0.42 per cent correction in the benchmark.

When asked about its desire to grow the international network, Kotak said the bank would like to grow its own presence but added that its geography-specific partnerships model has also worked in its favour till now.

“We’d like to grow internationally, certainly,” he said, adding that arrangements with Sumitomo Mitsui Bank in Japan and Evercore in USA have worked well.

“Additionally, ING Group, which now owns 6.5 per cent in the bank, will also be of help in Europe, Kotak said.

Under the merger, ING Vysya Bank shareholders were given 725 shares of Kotak for every 1,000 shares held.

Kotak today said the bank is not planning any new merger or acquisition, and will be focussing on growth opportunities created by recent announcements like the ING merger, buy-out of PineBridge mutual fund, investment in commodity bourse MCX, foray into general insurance and setting up a Payments Bank with Bharti Airtel.

Meanwhile, Kotak today sought to put an end to speculation around its 15 per cent stake in MCX, saying it is purely a “financial investment” for the bank.

Following the government’s move to increase foreign holding cap in insurance, Kotak said the bank is in discussions with its JV partner in the life space, Old Mutual, to increase its 26 per cent stake.

“Under our agreement, Old Mutual can increase its stake subject to fair market value with a floor. We’re in discussions but no decisions have been taken yet. We haven’t gone into depth yet,” he said.

Asserting that the opposition by ING Vysya Bank employee unions was not a “hiccup”, Kotak reiterated that the bank will abide by the agreements between the erstwhile ING Vysya Bank and its employees.

Its like a “joint family” and all the employees of ING Vysya have good relations with Kotak Mahindra Bank, he said.

However, Kotak was quick to add that with growth as the mantra, the bank will be pushing employees out of their “comfort zones”.

“We’ll also challenge people outside their comfort zones to do something different, something new and create opportunity.”

“If somebody is doing something in banking, he can look for opportunities outside, for example, a colleague who used to head branch banking, Mahesh Bala, is now the CEO of general insurance arm,” he added.

– PTI