The beleaguered United Bank of India (UBI), which is now steeped in losses after provisioning for its surging non-performing assets, held a meeting of its board of directors to explore ways to recover its loans.
This meeting came a day after the Union Finance Ministry accepted the resignation of Archana Bhargava less than a year after taking over as Chairman and Managing Director. Two executive directors are now running the bank.
The board reportedly discussed three options for bringing down its Rs.8,545 crore NPA (against Rs.2,901 crore a year ago). These included going in for corporate debt restructuring, selling bad assets to asset reconstruction companies, and going in for recoveries. The bank had earlier said that it would launch a drive to recover/upgrade Rs.2,000 crore of its bad assets within this quarter. UBI had reported a Rs.1,238.1 crore loss in the third quarter.
It had fresh slippages of Rs.3,172 crore in the third quarter compared to Rs.680 crore a year ago. SMEs and large industries accounted for the larger chunk of the NPA although agricultural loans also had a sizable share of Rs.1,155.6 crore in the quarter ended December 2013 against only Rs.315.2 crore a year ago.
