Public-sector lenders on Tuesday took possession of Kingfisher House, the Mumbai office of the grounded airline Kingfisher Airlines (KFA), which defaulted on loans to the tune of Rs 6,800 crore from a State Bank of India-led consortium.

The 17,000 sq ft property near the domestic terminal is valued at Rs 100 crore and was pledged for the loan.

State Bank of India (SBI), the country's largest lender, wants the government to increase the upper limit for interest subvention (subsidy) of home loans from Rs 15 lakh to Rs 25 lakh.

To be eligible for subvention, the cost of the house should also be increased from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 35 lakh in metros, SBI said in its wish list for the Union Budget. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is slated to present the Budget on February 28.

The country's largest lender, State Bank of India, plans to overhaul its transaction banking business, which will include involving trade finance and IT platform-based servces for liquidity management.

It will hire a strategic advisor for restructuring the business, which covers products and services across the National Banking Group, including government business, mid-sized and large-sized corporates.

In an effort to move closer to customers and to empower them, the State Bank of India, India’s largest bank, launched a massive, customer friendly initiative, Tech Learning Centres (TLCs) across the country.

“TLC is a unique initiative to empower its customers through technology and awareness,” said Anshula Kant, Deputy Managing Director, SBI.

The elephant might not be dancing but it’s surely trying to keep its flab under check. State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender, which controls 17 per cent of India’s loan market, has gone off the beaten track by slowing its pace of growth, a decision in tune with the macroeconomic environment.

On a year-on-year basis, SBI’s loan growth was 6.9 per cent till December-end, compared with the sector’s growth of 9.1 per cent.

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.

Indian markets on Friday rose the most in about three weeks, primarily due to State Bank of India (SBI) recording an improvement in asset quality in the December quarter. Hope of reform-oriented announcements in the Union Budget and the fact that inflation stayed well below the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s target boosted sentiment. A rise in global equities, owing to strong gross domestic product growth posted by Germany, further bolstered investor risk appetite.

Shares of State Bank of India (SBI) has rallied 7% to Rs 304 on NSE after the state-owned bank said its gross non-performing assets (NPA) as a percentage to total advances rose marginally at 4.90% as on December 31, 2014 (Q3FY15) compared to 4.89% in September quarter. Gross NPA stood at 5.73% at the end of December 2013 quarter.

Net NPA stood at 2.80% in December 2014 quarter against 2.73% in preceding quarter and 3.24% in the same quarter last year.

State Bank of India (SBI), the country's largest lender by assets, is likely to raise close to Rs 12,000 crore of capital by issuing fresh shares to investors.

The public sector bank appointed nine arrangers for the issue. Sectoral sources claimed Bank of America will be the "international marketing coordinator" for the share sale programme along with Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Barclays. ICICI Securities, Axis Bank, JM Financial, Kotak Mahindra Bank and SBI Capital Markets will also manage the transaction.

The Reserve Bank cut the repo rate by 25 basis points last month and in a bid to nudge banks to cut rates, the RBI cut SLR in its policy this week. But when will banks pass on rate cuts to consumers? SBI 's Arundhati Bhattacharya says she is in a wait-and-watch mode.

She says monetary policy is a bit of a blunt instrument mainly because cost of funds is not all that dependent on repo rates. Hence, transmission is not always symmetrical and therefore, can’t immediately reduce income, she adds.

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