State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and Allahabad Bank lead the pack of commercial banks with exposure to the agriculture sector in Uttar Pradesh, where the state government has decided to pay all crop loans owed by small and marginal farmers.

As of December 2016, nine banks (also including Union Bank of India, Bank of India and Bank of Baroda) had extended loans worth Rs 70,046 crore to the agriculture sector in the state. Of this, crop loans were Rs 49,811 crore.

The country’s two biggest lenders — State Bank of India (SBI) and HDFC Bank — have dropped their base rates by 15 basis points and 25 basis points respectively. HDFC Bank’s base rate is now 9% while SBI’s is a shade higher at 9.1%. ICICI Bank’s base rate is 9.25%. The move is significant since the loans of most of SBI’s customers—approximately 60%—are priced over the base rate and not the marginal cost of funds based lending rate (MCLR). For HDFC Bank, the share of customers whose loans are pegged to the base rate would be smaller.

India’s seven banks, including the country’s largest lender and the recently established bank for the women, today opened for business as one entity under the umbrella of the parent – State Bank of India. The state-run bank said it merged its five associate banks and Bhartiya Mahila Bank with itself effective April 1, and opened today as one bank.

The State Bank of India has merged its five Associate Banks – State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Travancore besides Bharatiya Mahila Bank – with itself with effect from April 1. With this six-way mega merger, the SBI has joined the league of top 50 banks globally in terms of assets.

The State Bank of India (SBI) has merged its operations with its four associate banks and the Bharatiya Mahila Bank, in a move that will create one of the top 50 banks in the world.

SBI has merged its operations five its four associate banks - State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Travancore, State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Mysore, and State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur. It has also merged its operations with the Bharatiya Mahila Bank.

State Bank of India (SBI) Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya has been ranked 26th in the Fortune magazine's World 50 Greatest Leaders list for 2017, only Indian to feature in the list this time.

The list features those who are “transforming the world and inspiring others to do the same.”

Ahead of the merger with parent State Bank of India (SBI), associate banks have started rolling out voluntary retirement schemes (VRS) for their employees with a very short deadline.

The VRS rolled out by the State Bank of Patiala has asked the employees to accept the offer within 15 days, between March 22 and April 5. A further seven days, till April 12, has been given to withdraw the application. An employee of the bank said the timeline given was too short.

State Bank of India (SBI), which will see five associate banks merge into it on April 1, has decided to shut down almost half the offices of these banks, including the head offices of three of them. This process will start from April 24.

"Out of the five head offices of the associate banks, we will retain only two. Three head offices of the associate banks will be unbound along with 27 zonal offices, 81 regional offices and 11 network offices of the associate banks," SBI Managing Director Dinesh Kumar Khara told IANS in an interview.

Opposition Congress and Nationalist Congress Party legislators on Thursday stormed the State Bank of India's corporate office at the Nariman Point demanding an apology from SBI chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya for her statement that crop loan waiver disrupts credit discipline among borrowers as they expect future loans to be waived as well. Agitated Congress and NCP legislators led by the leader of opposition in the state assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil shouted slogans for over half-an-hour and threatened to table privilege motion in the state legislature. Opposition members left the SBI office after learning that Bhattacharya is out of Mumbai.

The board of State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday gave a nod for raising equity capital up to Rs 15,000 crore in the next financial year to shore up capital adequacy. The approval is given to raise equity capital through routes like follow-on public offering (FPO), rights offering, overseas placement and employee stock options, SBI informed the BSE.

SBI executive said nod from the board is an enabling provision. The bank would raise capital from the market at an opportune time, subject to approval from government of India, its majority owner, and banking regulator Reserve Bank of India.

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