ING may sell its stake in ING Vysya Bank: Sources

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ING may sell its stake in ING Vysya Bank: Sources

Is ING looking to exit India? CNBC-TV18’s Latha Venkatesh reports that the rumour stems from a presentation made by ING to international investors. In the presentation, ING says it is looking to quit from 10 out of the 48 countries in which it is present.

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Is ING looking to exit India? Banking sources inform CNBC-TV18 that there is a lot of buzz that ING's 43.8% stake in ING Vysya Bank is probably up for sale. CNBC-TV18's Latha Venkatesh reports that the rumour stems from a presentation made by ING to international investors. In the presentation, ING says it is looking to quit from 10 out of the 48 countries in which it is present.

Also Read: ING Vysya looking for new partners to raise capital

Here is a verbatim transcript of Latha Venkatesh's comments on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

At the moment we have huge market buzz that ING is looking to selloff its entire stake in India, which is a 43.8% stake that it owns in ING Vysya Bank. ING is the only foreign bank to have an Indian presence, which does not come under the foreign bank branch restriction; it is treated as an Indian bank and therefore no branch restrictions on an annual basis.

We understand that the Indian operation is entirely up for sale and that rumour stems from a presentation made by ING to international investors. The presentation is available on the Website. In the presentation, ING says it is looking to quit from 10 out of the 48 countries in which it is present. However, the presentation does not say which banks.

Many bankers tell us that they have been approached by consultants. StanChart sources said that they themselves approached ING very early this month but they were told that the India and China operations are not for sale. Nevertheless, the consultants continue to approach even StanChart about whether they are interested in the ING piece.

Our email sent to the Singapore Corporate Communications offices were not replied to. The top officials to whom we sent SMSs did not reply, confirming or denying the story.

With respect to what price it might fetch-ING's market cap is around Rs 1,700 crore and their networth is about Rs 1,594 crore. They have 441 branches and 351 ATMs. Their advances as on March 31 was about Rs 17,000 crore and their deposits were about Rs 25,000 crore.

Besides this they have an AMC as well as an insurance business. Bankers say that there could be a problem of finding a buyer. Foreign banks like StanChart would be interested but RBI so far has not been so keen to allow foreign banks at one go to buy an Indian Bank and take away 400-500 branches. So that kind of buyers maybe disallowed unless it's a PanAsian purchase.

Indian private banks like ICICI Bank itself is in a capital conservation mode. HDFC Bank is still digesting Centurion . Axis has a new chief and perhaps may not be looking for an inorganic expansion just yet and the other Indian private banks are too small to buy, so there could be a problem of paucity of buyers at this juncture.