The Hindu Business Line : OIC alliance to have common logo

The OIC alliance, formed a few months ago between Oriental Bank of Commerce, Indian Bank and Corporation Bank, has initiated moves to make the alliance function, according to Mr K.N. Prithviraj, CMD of Oriental Bank of Commerce.

The present moves, as explained, presupposed the sharing of IT platform initially for ATMs, formation of a joint appraisal cell in Mumbai to undertake appraisal of large projects for funding, participating in each other's training programmes and building up a common data centre. "One of the partners of the alliance had gold for selling while the other partners also used their outlets to sell the metal, thus adding to their earnings," Mr Prithviraj said.

As he pointed out, Oriental Bank of Commerce currently has only 568 ATMs but the alliance would help its customers access a total of about 2,000 ATMs. "We are exploring new areas of cooperation among the OIC partners," he said. "We'll soon have a common logo and we want to do everything short of merger."

Right now three committees, at the CMD level, ED level and the joint working groups of the general managers of the three banks, were working out the modalities as to how to make the alliance mutually beneficial for the partners.

Business volume

Oriental Bank of Commerce, according to Mr Prithviraj, will shortly hit the level of Rs 1-lakh crore of business, comprising about Rs 60,000 crore of deposits and more than Rs 40,000 crore of advances. "In the first week of December, the business volume reached Rs 98,000 crore," he said, adding that it should be possible to double the present figure by 2010.

GTB merger complete

OBC's integration with Global Trust Bank (GTB), he said, was complete at various levels, both technology-wise and manpower-wise. "The integration has helped OBC have a wider branch network in the south as also in Mumbai,"

A total of 110 branches of erstwhile GTB, nearly half of them in Andhra Pradesh, have now become branches of OBC.

"The NPAs of GTB, amounting to more than Rs 1,300 crore at the time of merger, were being taken care of," he said, indicating that right now the NPAs on the GTB account dropped to Rs 900 crore or so.

OBC's net NPA ratio in the current fiscal would drop to around 0.35 per cent from around 0.47 per cent. The CRAR (Capital to Risk Weighted Assets Ratio) being 13.5 percent, there was no worry on the capital front, he added.

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