MC EXCLUSIVE India will continue to see more inbound and domestic interest: Pramod Kumar, CEO Barclays Bank PLC, India

Pramod Kumar, CEO Barclays Bank PLC, India and Vice Chairman, Investment Banking, Asia Pacific

Barclays has been in India for about 35 years and while India may not yet contribute much to its European headquarters, that doesn’t stop the bank from investing more in the country. The Rs 2,500 crore of money pumped in by its headquarters earlier this year is adequate to push the pedal on growth, says Pramod Kumar, CEO Barclays Bank PLC, India and Vice Chairman, Investment Banking, Asia Pacific, speaking exclusively to Moneycontrol.

Kumar is clear that while investment banking may be core to what Barclays does in the country, corporate banking is getting built as a pillar of strength for the bank. He explained that Barclays offers cash, trade and working capital loans as part of its corporate banking products and is connecting “our Indian clients to the globe in terms of the other geographies that they operate in”.

Edited excerpts:

Do you see briskness in your clients’ capex plans, especially after the GST rate cuts?

In select sectors, we are seeing capex continuing, particularly in low carbon intensity/renewables sector, whether it's the creation of new generation capacity or manufacturing of panels. Digital infrastructure, electronic manufacturing, healthcare delivery are sectors where we have seen corporate sector investing. We've also seen significant amount of capacity created for cement, steel, and the roads sector over the past few years. We’ve been an integral part of helping our clients raise dollar and rupee financing for these investments and this clearly shows that investors are quite comfortable understanding the risk and therefore pricing that risk. We have witnessed strong fund-raising activity in the domestic currency as well as dollar loan and bond market, year-to-date of about $8.5 billion, $33.6 billion ECBs and INR-USD 135 billion in bonds.

How do you expect FY26 to conclude for Barclays in India?

We've been growing above the GDP growth rate. With Rs 2,500 crore of capital that we invested earlier in the year to capitalize our business, we would continue to sustain this growth. We are pretty healthy on capital adequacy at this stage, but as we see more opportunities, there could be more investments into India.

Barclays India has been hitting newspapers with massive advertisements showcasing your corporate banking capabilities. How is this effort panning out for you?

Our corporate bank offers cash, trade, working capital loans, and is connecting our Indian clients to the globe in terms of the other geographies that they operate in. We are helping the needs of our multinational clients locally in India. This campaign was to articulate and educate our clients around the capabilities we've been investing in over the last few years, our product proposition and give them (clients) a greater degree of confidence in us to be able to serve them locally and overseas. We've received very positive feedback from clients. Amongst all our businesses, the investment bank remains the largest part of our business today, but corporate bank is growing significantly, and this campaign is a reflection of our intent to continue to invest in the franchise.

ECM is a missing piece for Barclays in India. Is that a business you might consider in future?

That is an opportunity we're not addressing at the moment in India. But outside of that also we've seen strong growth in our business. We continue to evaluate all new business opportunities and will invest in new business areas when we feel comfortable.

Do you see a meaningful uptick in ECBs given some regulatory leeway now being introduced?

It's certainly encouraging to see the regulator being proactive in addressing some of these limitations or historical constraints. This will lead to a greater access to the overseas loan market. We've seen a fair amount of liquidity available locally. The US interest rates have been high, although the hedging costs have come down in the last 12 months. I see continued compression in the US yields, which might translate to greater amount of access to overseas markets through ECBs or bonds than what we've seen in the last I would say 12 – 24 months.

There's been a reshuffle in Barclays on your approach to private banking in India. India is also being picked out as a key market. How do you see the space evolve, given that this is exactly what some of the more mature foreign banks in India are looking at?

The private banking opportunity in India is growing, which is why you see domestic and global players including us investing. We are investing materially in Singapore as an Asian hub and similarly is the case in India. The private banking market for Ultra High New Worth (UHNW) and High Net Worth (HNW) individuals is growing at double digits as disposable incomes rise and the overall space is growing at 13% annually with an opportunity to tap into $ 1.5tn in financial assets to be managed. We've been in the private banking business for nearly two decades. As a bank, we also have the ability to offer holistic services such as bank accounts, savings, cross border plus domestic products and so on. Certainly, there is a space for foreign bank to offer private banking. Unlike some of our global bank peers, we don’t run our private bank business as an extension of consumer banking business and have capabilities to offer this as a dedicated and specialized offering. That offers us the ability to view private banking market opportunity standalone, and approach it in a very different fashion, unlike a branch-led approach. We focus on UHNIs and family offices, offering them products and services to help grow and transfer their wealth across global wealth corridors – through the UK, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

You’ve had a busy deals year. Talk us through that.

We've been quite active on the M&A front. We advised Capgemini on WNS acquisition, Manipal Hospitals on their acquisition of Sahyadri hospitals, Siemens Gamesa on sale of their wind turbine business and Temasek and EQT on the sale of Renewables platform. We also advised Novigo on their sale to Blackstone owned R Software System. Earlier, we had advised Bharti on their acquisition of 24.5% stake in BT Group in the UK. We continue to see opportunities although there's a lot that's also happening on the IPO front. We've been very active helping our Indian clients raise either acquisition financing, debt or refinancing their capex. We worked with the Reliance group on a securitization trade, supported Bharti Telecom and helped Torrent when they acquired JB Pharma.

Year 2025 was robust in terms of outbound deals. You see this continues in 2026 as well?

It was very encouraging to see some of these outbound M&A of the size and scale so far which we hadn't seen in the recent past. It reflects a few things, including a growing confidence of the Indian entrepreneurs to acquire and manage global businesses. It is also a reflection of increased financial and management capabilities of Indian companies to do such deals. Indian business houses and entrepreneurs are far more disciplined today than what was the case earlier and you would see them being selective in what they are buying. Their ability to handle complexity, manage leverage and integration is far better than what was the case pre global financial crisis. Having said that, I do feel that the Indian entrepreneurs and companies have far bigger opportunities to address in Indian market as compared to looking at overseas. Therefore, India will continue to see more inbound and domestic interest than outbound.

Financial services sector has topped the league table in terms of inbound investments…

Financial services, infrastructure, renewables, healthcare delivery, tech enabled consumer and fintech sector will continue to see strong interest and transaction activity. Many large Indian conglomerates have also undertaken big domestic acquisitions this year, whether it was the JSW Group’s acquisition of Akzo Nobel and O2 Energy, the Torrent group’s acquisition of JB Pharma, Jubilant Group’s investment in Coke's business in India and earlier the Mankind Pharma deal. It suggests that Indian conglomerates and entrepreneurs today seem more confident and willing to invest domestically to increase their market share and to enter into new businesses, whether in India and overseas. Relatively, large number of financial sponsors continue to deploy more in India than China. It goes to show that Indian entrepreneurs, industrial houses, global financial strategic investors are quite comfortable to deploy increasingly more capital and take more risk in India. It is very encouraging to see global banking institutions such as SMBC, ENDB, etc. and sophisticated financial investors like Warburg Pincus, ADIA and Blackstone, etc. invest significant amount in the Indian banking sector.