Union Bank (UB) is bullish on the economy and having secured almost Rs 5 billion in Tier I capital, is now eyeing countries in East Asia for the Tier II capital. "We haven't still finalised which countries we will source these funds from, but Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong are places we are interested in targeting as these countries have the strength of the (Kuala Lumpur-based) Genting Group, (which owns 29% i UB)," Anil Amarasuriya, Director/CEO Union Bank, told the Business Times on the sidelines of the opening of UB's state of the art headquarters on Friday.
"We strongly feel that with the predicted high economic growth rates, the banking and finance sector will contribute positively in driving the country's way forward. In this context, Union Bank has leveraged on its strong financial position and has comfortably surpassed the regulatory requirements on capital adequacy placed by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka and is already nearing the 5 billion-rupee mark required by 2015 enabling more space to continue bank operations safely and to remain steady and resilient," Mr. Amarasuriya added.
The new head office will also house the bank's subsidiary companies including National Asset Management Limited, which they bought early last year with Ennid Capital, (the Sri Lankan Jeweller, B.P. de Silva's investment arm) from Milford Holdings Private Limited, a subsidiary of Distilleries Company PLC for nearly Rs 455 million.
The bank which went public last March UB plans to carry out branch expansion and mobilisation of low cost funds, expand while leveraging of e-channels, focus on priority sectors in the economy for credit, and carry out trade financing, expand their capital market operations and share trading, introduce banking for the bottom of the pyramid (bare-foot banking), implementation of a core banking system to increase efficiency and resource utilization and risk management system for prudent credit pricing and monitoring and focused recoveries.
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