EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. ICICI Bank reported strong profits for 2QFY2022, with standalone net profits increasing by 30% YoY to Rs 55 bn., enthusing the market. The bank has been focusing on retail loans to drive its assets and profits, after heavily haemorrhaging on corporate loans prior to FY2020. The retail...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. Government banks have been derided for indulging in ‘phone banking’ (being instructed on the telephone by ruling party politicians and civil bureaucrats to lend to specific unworthy companies). But what the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) affidavit in the Delhi Court (as disclosed by the media -- here and...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. This analyst’s research note on September 24, 2021 highlighted HDFC Bank’s disturbing practice of extracting ‘processing fees’ from prospective customers who applied for loans using false/fabricated documents. Following this, the media finally woke up (here and here) from their self-induced slumber. HDFC Bank was forced to issue...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. In the midst of Aditya Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company’s (ABSL AMC) Initial Public Offering (IPO), prospective investors should be aware that the declining annual revenue in FY2021 disclosed in the Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) is on account of falling Average Assets Under Management (AAUM)....
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.
“hush money”: money paid to someone to prevent them from disclosing embarrassing or discreditable information – Concise Oxford English Dictionary
HDFC Bank, India’s most valuable bank, has been found to be levying ‘processing fees’ on prospective retail customers who submitted spurious documents for availing a loan from the...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. The IDFC’s board of directors’ decision to reclassify Vinod Rai, hitherto independent director, as a non-independent non-executive director provides a backdoor entry for all those independent directors whom founders/promoters and executive management want to retain after the mandated two consecutive terms.
In the critical financial sector there is...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. Senior executives are rushing for the exit door at Aditya Birla Finance Ltd. (ABFL), the non-bank finance company (NBFC) subsidiary of Aditya Birla Capital (ABC), the holding company for all the financial services business of the Aditya Birla group. Since May 2021, at least five senior officials...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)’s order penalising Kotak Mahindra Mutual Fund (Kotak MF), a subsidiary of Kotak Mahindra Bank (KMB) provides an in depth insight normally unavailable to the public on how imprudently investment decisions are taken by so called professionals in marquee firms...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. Institutional investors were recently in the news for opposing a 10% pay hike for a CEO-promoter in FY2021, a year of bad results for his firm. One big story went unremarked: that the latest pay hike was on a high base, since the CEO had received a 51% pay hike...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. A notable feature in HDFC Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank (KMB) is the historical absence of any commercial banking expertise amongst the independent directors on the boards. The founders (HDFC and Uday Kotak) and the Nomination and Remuneration Committee in both banks, as a deliberate strategy, have...
