Capital a constraint for subsidiaries, says Standard Chartered Bank

Standard Chartered appointed Bollywood actor Anushka Sharma as its brand ambassador to target the increasing young working customers

Standard Chartered Bank said on Monday onerous capital requirements were preventing foreign lenders from converting themselves into wholly-owned subsidiaries (WOS) for local operations.

The bank, which has 100 branches in the country, was not looking to decrease its presence as many of its foreign bank peers had done, a top executive said. “It (converting into WOS) is very capital-expensive. If you subsidiarise, the capital that is put into the country is dedicated from the Tier-I capital of the parent,” the bank’s country chief executive, Zarin Daruwala, told reporters when asked about the impediments to conversion into WOS. She said the government