ICICI Bank coming up with 1st ever landmark building

The largest private sector lender of the country, ICICI Bank is all set to open its landmark office in Hyderabad. The office also happens to be the largest office in the country.

The office which is the regional hub of the bank will be the first of its kind in Asia and probably in the global forefront also.

The building weighing 5.5 lakh tonne will supercede the famous twin towers of New York which weighed 5 lakh tonne before getting destoyed in 9/11 attack.

The floor area will be comparable to the famous Eden Gardens of Kolkata. Also will it have the largest escalator of the country, 14.4 mts long.

It can hold 22,000 employees at one time and will have parking alley capable of holding 4,500 two wheelers and 1,500 four wheelers and 11 buses.

ICICI Bank will open full-fledged branch in Mauritius

ICICI Bank, India’s second-largest lender is expanding its branch network globally. Bank is planning to open a full-fledged branch in Mauritius.

According to senior official of the Finance Ministry, bank is planning to open an office in the country. The official said, yet no decision has been taken in this regard, it is at very preliminary stages.

At present in Mauritius bank has a wholly-owned asset management subsidiary called ICICI International Ltd.

Bank also has a jointly-controlled asset management firm called TCW/ICICI Investment Partners LLC, in this bank holds 50percent stake.

ICICI Bank branches are operating in 18 countries all over the world currently bank has a network of 2,044 branches and about 5,546 ATMs in India.

Bank is having subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, Russia and Canada and branches in United States, Singapore, Bahrain, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Qatar and Dubai International Finance Centre.

Apart from this, bank representative offices are operating in United Arab Emirates, China, South Africa, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Moreover the UK subsidiary has set up branches in Beligum and Germany.

ICICI Bank launches Hindi version of its website

ICICI Bank has launched Hindi version of its website. After launching the website in Jaipur, bank chief executive and managing director, Chanda Kochhar, said, “We have launched the Hindi version of the personal banking pages on our website to offer our customers the power to use technology for convenient banking.”

In August after the Reserve Bank of India approval merger of Bank of Rajasthan (BoR) with ICICI Bank has completed therefore ICICI added 458 branches and over 20-lakh customers, the launch of Hindi website will be of great help to many bank customers.

According to ICICI Bank release its English website is among the 10 most visited banking and financial website of the world.

The Hindi website will also provide the information of entire range of banking services like money transfer, bill payment, open fixed deposits and placing requests for different types of services, it added.

ICICI Bank hikes BPLR and FRR rates by 50 basis points

ICICI Bank has raised its benchmark lending rate by 50 basis points to 16.25 per cent. Now the home, auto and corporate loans will be costlier.

A statement released by bank stated the revised rates will come into effect from August 18, 2010.

The bank has also raised its Floating Reference Rate (FRR) by 50 basis points, for consume loans (including home loans). After the raise the FRR will be 13.25 per cent as against 12.75 per cent.

ICICI Bank said, up to June 30 the loans and advances interest rates were determined with reference to BPLR and FRR but from July 1, 2010 the interest rate on new loans and advances including consumer loans are determined with reference to ICICI Bank Base Rate (I-Base).

However the bank has clarified that the customers who have taken loan on fixed rate of interest will not be affected by revised rates and their contracted rates will remain unchanged.

I-Base is set at 7.50% p.a. The Bank sources said, it will continue to offer its current dual rate home loan scheme at existing rates.

Country’s largest lender the State Bank of India has also hiked its lending rates by 50 basis points and deposit rates by 150 basis points.

ICICI, HDFC bank kept on same platform as PSBs : DIPP

DIPP Secretary R P Singh clarified those private sector big lenders ICICI bank and HDFC Bank who have been classified as foreign-owned entities are on the same footing as nationalized banks as the two have been integrated under the Indian laws.

Singh told reporters, "In my view, neither ICICI nor HDFC Bank, even though their equity is owned by foreigners, suffers from any handicap, because they are incorporated in India. They are on the same footing as other nationalized banks and we have nothing to worry about it."

He said, RBI does not make any distinguish between these banks and public sector banks.


Elaborating, he said, "Banking is allowed via two ways -- either you open branches, in that case you don't technically bring FDI, or you incorporate a bank in India, take a license from RBI and than that particular bank gets equity from outside."

But in second case, he said, the lender technically becomes a foreign bank. "But that bank we are calling foreign bank only for the purpose of downstream investment, otherwise it's an incorporated entity in India. It is on the same footing as other nationalized banks in terms of priority sector lending and branch expansion."

Singh also added these banks don’t have to worry about any complications while investing in the insurance and NBFC sectors.


"Insurance has been kept out of new (FDI) rules that changed the status of ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank (to foreign owned and Indian controlled) and 100 per cent FDI is permitted in NBFC, so there should be no problem," Singh said.

He told that in a month’s time the department will be introducing a draft on the financial sector that will provide solution to the worries of the sector regarding the new FDI rules.

As per FDI rules announced last year, ICICI and HDFC Banks 74% of equities are owned by the foreigners therefore, they are considered as foreign lenders.

Fraudster withdraws money from manager’s ICICI bank salary account

Now days most of the companies have opened salary accounts for their employees and the salaries are directly transferred in their accounts every month. Most of us feel salary accounts are most secured as not much transaction is done through these accounts except of withdrawing salaries that too through ATM.

Recently in one of the incidence Ashish Sahay , a senior manager employed with Serum Institute MMR production got a shock of his life when he received news that Rs 94,000 had been withdrawn from his salary account, without his knowledge. Sahay is having salary account with ICICI Bank’s Bund Garden Road branch since 2000.

On June 22, Sahay a resident of Hadapsar received a message from the bank stating that Rs. 94,600 had been with-drawn from his account. He immediately lodged a complaint with the Hadapsar police station. SI Dwaraka Dokhe of Hadapsar PS, who is investigating the case, said, “On June 22, at around 4 pm, Sahay got a phone call saying that the ICICI bank’s server was facing problems since some time, with a request not to do any transaction during that time.

After the call, Sahay also received a SMS in which the same information was conveyed. He did not carry out any transaction on that day.”

On the same day, again around 9 pm, he received an SMS from the bank stating that Rs. 94,600 has been withdrawn from his account.

He was shocked and he immediately called up ICICI bank’s customer care service. He told the executive to freeze the account and asked for the details, but the customer care executive told him to personally visit the branch the next day with his complaint.

Dokhe added, “The next morning, Sahay first went to ICICI’s Bund Garden branch, where he was told to go to the bank’s Magarpatta branch. He visited that branch and met the officials.

They told him that they will conduct an enquiry, and requested him to not file a police complaint till then. When he did not hear anything from the bank after waiting for a few days, he asked the bank to provide him details of his transactions, upon which the bank officials told him to lodge a police complaint.”

At this, Sahay lodged a complaint with Hadapsar police. Dokhe said, “We are speaking to ICICI Bank officials. We have asked them to give us all his transaction details.

Once we get that report, we will be able to locate where the money was transferred from his account. Through that, we can investigate the case further.”