India most profitable market for StanChart

MUMBAI: For the first time ever, India has emerged as the most profitable market for Standard Chartered Bank. Profits from the bank's Indian operations have touched $1.19 billion, up 13% from last year's $1.06 billion.

Until last year, Hong Kong was the largest market for StanChart in terms of profits. This year the profits from the special administrative region of China at $1.10 billion are behind that of India. StanChart, which has a presence in 70 markets globally, now generates one fifth of its profits from India.

The results for 2010 are part of the bank's global balance sheet which has the calendar year as the accounting year. For 2010, the bank has reported a 19% jump in profit before tax to $6.12 billion on income of $16.06 billion, an increase of 6% over the previous year. The bank has announced dividend of 69.15 cents per share, an increase of 9% over last year.

StanChart, which led several deals last year including Bharti's acquisition of Zain Telecom and refinance of Tata Corus acquisition finance, has also been the market leader in M&A.

Its income from wholesale banking at $1.5 billion was more than three times consumer banking results ($493 million). In India, the bank's balance sheet grew 18-20% to $20 billion during the year.

"Our performance this year is not exceptional, it is in keeping with the consistent growth that we have posted record income and record profits as we gained market share," said Neeraj Swaroop, country head, India. He pointed out that the bank had recorded a five-year compounded annual growth rate of 38% in profits and 28% in income.

The 153-year-old bank, which was the first multinational to list in India following an Indian Depository Receipt issue, is also among the few banks that fall within RBI's description of systemically important - a term used for banks whose assets are more than 0.25% of the banking industry's assets. RBI in its discussion paper on the presence of multinational banks in India had said that systemically important multinational banks should preferably operate in India in the form of wholly-owned subsidiaries rather than branches. Swaroop said his bank would be sending its comments on the issue of wholly-owned subsidiaries to RBI by March 7.