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BUSINESS

State-run banks mull stock

options to retain employees

HYDERABAD

THE HINDU WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9, 2016

Govt. to sell 5% in
Concor today
Container Corp.

Rs.1226.65

1570

PEERZADA ABRAR

1470
1370
1270

Many mid-management officers are due to retire over the next five years

1170
1070

MANOJIT SAHA

tate-run lenders like Bank of

Baroda and IDBI Bank are
planning to offer stock options to staff in a bid to retain
top talent. This assumes significance in the backdrop of
the imminent entry of 21 new
niche banks which have been
granted licences by the RBI to
begin operations, as well as
the prospect of a clutch of
mid-management professionals reaching retirement age
soon.
For instance, IDBI Bank,
which has started to transform itself by realigning its
business, has also drawn a
roadmap
for
human
resources.
The lender, which is planning to increase the employee strength to 21,500 by
March 31, 2019 from the
15,500 at present, is not only
working out a scheme for career progression
but also mulling
an employee stock option plan (ESOP) to inPOACHING centivise them, said
Kishor Kharat, MD and
PERIL
CEO, IDBI Bank. Bank of
Baroda MD and CEO
staff
P.S. Jayakumar said the
bank was considering an
ESOP for its employees
which could bridge the
compensation gap between public
and private sector employees.
In general, at a lower level, public sector institutions pay better
than their counterparts. But while
progressively going up (in the rank),
there is a gap that is arising and at a
senior level, the gap really becomes
unmanageable, Mr. Jayakumar
said.
The board had already approved
the ESOP. Now, the bank will write
to the government for its approval.
We need to create a variable incentive system without creating
perverse economic interests. If we
can get an ESOP plan, then, at least
it will cover some part of the gap,
Mr. Jayakumar said.
State Bank of India (SBI), the

Sep 10, 15

Mar 8, 16

NEW DELHI: The Union Government will sell 5 per cent stake
in Container Corporations of
India (Concor) at a minimum
price of Rs.1,195 a piece on
Wednesday, to garner Rs.1,165
crore.
The floor price set for the
offer for sale (OFS) is at a discount of 2.58 per cent over
Tuesdays closing price of
Rs.1,226.65 of Concor on the
BSE.
The government will sell 5
per cent stake in Concor
through an offer for sale at a
floor price of Rs.1,195 , a
source said.
The sale of 97.48 lakh shares
at this floor price will fetch
about Rs.1,165 crore to the exchequer. PTI

ILLUSTRATION: DEEPAK HARICHANDAN

At a lower level, public

sector institutions pay
better than their
counterparts. But while
progressively going up,
there is a gap that really
becomes unmanageable.
P.S. Jayakumar,
MD and CEO, BoB
countrys largest lender, had floated
the idea of ESOP for its employees
some time ago. However, the proposal is still awaiting governments
approval.
Most banks plan to offer stock options to their employees in the rank
of assistant general manager and
above.
Union Finance Minister Arun
Jaitley had said recently that the
government was actively discussing
the proposal for Employee Stock

BENGALURU: LoveCycles, a
start-up which enables
women to keep a track of
their menstrual and
physiological health via a
mobile app, has raised Rs.5
crore from seed-stage
venture capital firm Prime
Venture Partners.
The funding round also
marks the official unveiling
of the app in India.
The firm will use the
money to expand its
presence in the country
and provide regional
language support. It has
already launched the Hindi
language support for the
tracker.
The funding comes at a
crucial time, said John
Paul, chief executive of
LoveCycles, who founded
the firm in 2012. An
engineer, Mr. Paul said that
womens health has been a

much-neglected issue,
particularly menstrual
health that is still a taboo in
various parts of the
country. We want to
empower women with
information and
technology, he said.
LoveCycles said it logs
over 1.2 million active
users every month.
The start-up offers the
app on Apples mobile
operating system iOS,
Googles Android platform
and Microsoft's Windows
platform. The firm said it
has clocked over six
million downloads across
190 countries. It is seeing
highest downloads coming
from geographies such as
United States, Brazil, Italy,
Mexico, South Korea and
Russia. The app, which
supports 13 languages
globally, is backed by a
powerful algorithm that
can predict moods and

symptoms based on the

progress of the menstrual
cycle.
With smartphone and
mobile Internet growing,
were delighted to help
bring this value to Indian
women, said Amit
Somani, Managing Partner
at Prime Venture Partners.
We are excited about the
possibilities it can create in
helping women and girls in
India.
Experts say that
menstrual hygiene is one of
the most important yet
neglected health issues in
the developing world. In
India, approximately 70
per cent of all reproductive
diseases are caused by
poor menstrual hygiene.
There are 355 million
women in thereproductive
age in India who need
mechanisms and
structures in place to meet
their menstrual needs.

CBI books Syndicate Bank officials for fraud

DEVESH K. PANDEY

Ownership Plan (ESOP) for public

sector bank employees.
The government is considering
(the proposal of ESOP for bank employees). It is in a very advanced
stage. It has been a long-standing
demand and is (under) active consideration, Mr. Jaitley said at Gyan
Sangam, the annual retreat for
bankers, last week.
Public sector banks are facing
headwinds on the human resources
front as many mid-management officers are retiring over the next five
years, prompting the central bank to
term it a retirement decade.
In addition, the 21 new banks,
which have received differentiated
licences from the Reserve Bank of
India (RBI), will try to poach employees from existing banks.
In August-September last year,
RBI has granted licences to 11 payment banks and 10 small finance
banks to start operations.
While these banks were given 18
months time to roll out services,
most of these entities are expected
to start operations in 2016.

LoveCycles start-up gets funding,

unveils app in Hindi for women

NEW DELHI: Five mid-rung man-

agers of Syndicate Bank have

been accused by the Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI)
of defrauding the bank of
more than Rs.1,000 crore. Only two years ago, the banks
Chairman-cum-Managing
Director (CMD) S. K. Jain was
arrested for graft.
According to the CBI, the
accused have been cheating
the bank since 2011 through
various ways and for almost
five years, the large-scale
swindling remained undetected despite periodic internal and external audit. A chartered accountant and a few
businessmen also colluded
with the accused.
The entire operation was
carried out through just three
of its branches in Rajasthantwo in Jaipur and one

The officials are

charged with
defrauding the
bank of more than
Rs.1,000 crore
in Udaipur. The accused had
opened over 380 bank accounts in the three branches,
several of them using identification documents of genuine
account holders in other
banks, through which the
swindled money was diverted
to various destinations.
It was during a recent audit
that the bank authorities identified the accused officials
and suspended them.
They lodged a complaint
with the CBI on the basis of
which a case was registered
and searches conducted on
Tuesday in Delhi, Faridabad,
Jaipur and Udaipur.

The role of senior bank officials has not been ruled out at
this stage.
A CBI spokesperson said
among those named in the
case are the then General
Manager Satish Kumar Goyal,
Deputy General Manager
Sanjeev Kumar, Chief Manager Deshraj Meena, and Assistant General Managers Adarsh
Manchanda and Avadhesh
Tewari.
Udaipur-based Chartered
Accountant Bharat Bamb, Jaipur resident Shankar Khandelwal and Piyush and Vineet
Jain from Udaipur have also
been named along with several companies and their
proprietors.
The accused persons cheated the bank largely through
discounting of fake cheques,
withdrawing money through
overdraft facility using forged
life insurance policies and

discounting of fake inland

bills that were raised against
the letters of credit shown to
have been issued by another
bank.
The discounting process
involves immediate payment
without waiting for the
cheque clearance, for which
the bank charges a minimal
interest rate.
However, the payment is
made only after checking the
authenticity of the cheque,
which was not done by the accused bank officials.
The amount involved in individual transactions were
kept between Rs.40 lakh and
Rs.5 crore, a majority of them
ranging from Rs.2.5 crore to
Rs.4 crore, to evade detection
by higher bank authorities.
Many of the transactions
were also adjusted from the
proceeds of new fraudulent
transactions.

Not enough ATMs: Reserve Bank

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
MUMBAI: Growth of card ac-

ceptance infrastructure like

automated teller machines
(ATMs) and point-of-sale
(PoS) terminals is not on a
par with that of card issuance.
This was observed by the
Reserve Bank of India (RBI)
in its concept paper on card
acceptance infrastructure released on Tuesday.
The growth in acceptance
infrastructure has not kept
pace with the growth in
cards. While debit cards registered a growth of 64 per
cent between October 2013
and October 2015, during the
same period ATMs increased
by around 43 per cent, while
POS machines increased by

The lower growth

of ATM and
PoS terminals
has impacted
card use
around 28 per cent, the paper said. Another disconcerting feature is that the rate of
growth in setting up card acceptance infrastructure has
also slowed down during
these three years.
Debit cards vastly outnumber the volume of credit
cards issued in the country.
Further, a high number of
debit cards have been issued
in recent times under the
Prime Ministers Jan Dhan
Yogana, especially to custom-

ers in rural areas and smaller

towns, the RBI said.
According to the concept
paper, the lower growth of
ATM and PoS terminals, both
in terms of numbers and geographical spread, has impacted card use.
Cash continues to be the
predominant mode of payment as it appears to be costless in comparison to the
visible costs associated with
card/electronic payments, it
said.
Some of the factors that
have inhibited growth in the
acceptance infrastructure are
lack of adequate and low-cost
telecom infrastructure and
lack of incentive for merchants for acceptance of
cards, among others.

NSE asks brokers

to segregate client
demat accounts
NEW DELHI: Leading stock exchange NSE has directed brokers to ensure that their demat accounts used for
holding clients securities
will have to be compulsorily
flagged as client margin account by April 30. The move
is aimed at ensuring proper
segregation of client securities and clear demarcation of
demat accounts used for client purposes. PTI

Nalcos 25% share

buyback in FY 17
NEW DELHI: Aluminium maker

Nalcos estimated Rs.3,250

crore share buyback programme has been delayed due
to procedural issues and will
be completed in FY 2016-17.
In January, the Mines Ministry had said that the Finance
Ministry asked it to allow Nalco to buy back 25 per cent of
governments stake in the
Navratna company in a bid to
tap PSUs funds to make up
for the shortfall in disinvestment proceeds.
There are certain procedures that need to be followed, which is taking time.
The buyback will not happen
in this month, Mines Secretary Balvinder Kumar told
PTI.
CM
YK

HY-HY