ANZ keen on expanding in India

The lender plans to open a full-service branch geared to the institutional and markets business.

ANZ says it will expand its operations in India after re-entering that market next year and is on track to meet its Asian growth targets.

ANZ last week received final approval from the Reserve Bank of India to open a branch in Mumbai in the first half of 2011.

ANZ left India a decade ago when it was the country's second largest foreign bank by selling its assets to Standard Chartered Bank.

ANZ chief executive Mike Smith told Sky News on Saturday that it was hard to specify an exact date for the bank's return to India. ''We hope in the middle of the next half,'' he said. ''That will be a full-service branch but will be predominantly geared to the institutional and markets business, and then gradually we will expand from there.''
ANZ is also expanding its Asia-Pacific operations. It has the biggest presence in the Asia-Pacific region of Australia's big four banks.

It said on Thursday that the division contributed $509 million, or 11.3 per cent, of group after-tax profit in 2009-10 and 14 per cent of its underlying earnings.

View the full story in The Sydney Morning Herald.