Union Bank of India targets expansion of international operations

The lender strives to achieve 20% growth in deposits and 22% in advances via extending global reach.

Union Bank of India, one of the country's leading public sector banks, aims to scale up its international banking operations.

The PSU bank, which currently has a full-fledged branch at Hong Kong and representative offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Abu Dhabi and London, intends to set up a subsidiary in London as well as branches in Sydney, Belgium and Dubai. The bank has received the requisite permission from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for the purpose.

"To set up these overseas branches, we have applied to the local authorities. We will go ahead with the plan as and when we get the approval from the local authorities”, MV Nair, chairman and managing director (CMD) of Union Bank told reporters.

The bank clocked a total pan-India business of Rs 3,55,000 crore ($79.24 billion) in 2010-11 which included Rs 2.10 lakh crore ($46.87 billion) of deposits, the remaining being advances. The public sector bank is eyeing a growth of 20 per cent in deposits and 22 per cent in advances in this fiscal.

It also intends to ramp up its branch network in the current fiscal. The bank has around 3,000 branches at present and 400 more branches are set to be opened in 2011-12.

The ATM network of the bank is also set to grow from about 2,700 to 5,000 in this fiscal. Besides, Union Bank has planned to take up its network of business correspondents agents from 6,900 to 20,000 by 2013.

View the full story in Business Standard.