Tamilnad Mercantile Bank (TMB) will soon venture into corporate lending by setting up Corporate Banking Cells in six cities. H. S. Upendra Kamath, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the bank, told presspersons here on Monday that the drivers of growth for the bank on the credit front were agriculture, retail, MSMEs and other priority sectors. Since the bank was not present in the corporate space, it planned to open corporate branches in Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad and Bangalore. These would be started in another 45 days as Corporate Banking Cells in a branch in these cities. The entry into corporate lending would be gradual and calibrated, he said.
The bank was targeting Rs.1-lakh crore annual business in another four years from the existing Rs.41,000 crore. It had 385 branches now and 80 per cent of these were in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. The bank aimed to have pan-India presence. It would have 800 branches in another four years. In the next 15-18 months, more branches would be opened in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Mr. Kamath said the bank had not been able to hold its annual meeting for the last four years.
“We are working on it and, hopefully issues will be resolved and we will be able to hold it (AGM) soon. We are trying our level best to hold it,” he said. (The bank has not been able to have its AGM for the last four years because of legal dispute between its shareholders).
