ICICI Bank has under-performed both Axis Bank and the S&P BSE Sensex in 2015 so far. As compared to gains of 13.3 per cent in Axis scrip and 3.4 per cent in Sensex, the ICICI scrip has corrected about six per cent this year. Consequently, ICICI Bank now trades at a 16 per cent discount to Axis on a price/book value basis, higher than its historical valuation discount of about 10-11 per cent vis-à-vis Axis. ICICI Bank trades at 2.2 times FY16 estimated book value versus Axis' 2.6 times. Analysts, however, believe this valuation discount is unjustified and should reduce over time.

Benchmark share indices rebounded after three days of losses to open marginally higher tracking firm gains in their Asian peers with bank shares leading the gains.

At 9:30AM, the 30-share Sensex was up227 points at 28,886 and the 50-share Nifty was up 66 points at 8,766. The Bank Nifty was up nearly 200 points at 19,235.

ICICI Bank Ltd, India's largest private- sector lender, is in talks to sell a part of its stake in an insurance unit to Temasek Holdings and Carmignac Gestion for about $300 million, people familiar with the matter said.

The Mumbai-based lender plans to complete an agreement to sell about five per cent of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance by March-end, the people said, asking not to be identified.

With bad loans continuing to be a problem, ICICI Bank is reportedly planning to re-start a special vertical to handle such assets.

The country's largest lender State Bank of India already has such a group called Stressed Assets Management Group to handle high NPAs, which came lower during the December quarter.

Mumbai: ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private-sector lender, will revive a unit to spearhead a drive to recover bad debts, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The Mumbai-based lender will restart the so-called Special Asset Management Group, which it shut a decade ago, by April, the people said. They asked not to be identified as they’re not authorized to discuss the effort.

Banking shares are in demand with the Bank Nifty surging 581 points to 20,542 in early morning deal on NSE after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) cut the repo rate by 25 bps to 7.5% today.

Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Canara Bank, Bank of India, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and State Bank of India are up between 2-3%.

A large number of listed firms, including top blue-chips, are facing heat of the stock market authorities for sudden surge in their share prices and trading volumes as also for ‘speculative’ information leaks leaving investors at large in the lurch.

In just about one and a half months since the beginning of this year, the stock exchanges have sought ‘clarifications’ from at least 19 Sensex blue chips including giants like Mahindra and Mahindra, Hindustan Unilever, SBI, Coal India, Wipro, Hero Motocorp, ICICI Bank, Cipla and L&T.

Asset management firms ICICI Securities Primary Dealership (ICICI Sec PD), Reliance Capital AMC (RCap AMC) and HSBC AMC have emerged as top bidders for managing the huge corpus of retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation(EPFO).

EPFO’s apex decision-making body, the Central Board of Trustees (CBT), will take a final call on appointing fund managers for three-year terms, beginning April 1, in a meeting on Tuesday.

Mumbai: ICICI Prudential Life Insurance has initiated a process to sell up to a 5% stake in the life insurance venture, said a person familiar with the development, adding that the process is in the early stages. He declined to be named.

Long-term investors like sovereign funds, pension funds and other financial investors have evinced interest in picking up stake in the life insurance joint venture between ICICI Bank Ltd (74%) and Prudential Plc (26%).

ICICI Bank today said it has acquired 32 million shares or 15.31% of the total diluted capital of Deccan Chronical Holdings Limited (DCHL), taking its total stake in the company to 24.90%.

The bank, which is in a legal tussle with the media firm to recover its Rs 490-crore loan, said it has not taken into account the equity allotment by DCHL to Srei Infrastructure Finance as it was done in breach of a court order.

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