Canara Bank to open branch in New York shortly

Bank last month raised Rs 1,500 crore from bonds to augment its capital base

State-owned Canara Bank today said it will soon open a branch in New York as it has got regulatory approvals from the US authorities.

"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," Canara Bank Executive Director A K Gupta said on the sidelines of an event organised by PHD.

With opening of this branch, the bank would be foraying in the US market, he said.

Besides, the bank is looking at Dubai, Tokyo, Frankfurt (Germany) and Qatar for opening offices.

At present, the Bangalore-based 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 augment its capital base.

This capital raising would be over and above Rs 500 crore that the government has 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).

The government's infusion in PSBs is in addition to their internally generated capital to enable the banks to maintain a comfortable level of Tier-I, or equity, capital.

An amount of Rs 12,517 crore was infused in 13 PSBs during 2012-13. This fiscal's infusion by the government is pegged at Rs 14,000 crore.