Rabobank’s divestment to benefit Yes Bank’s stock: Kapoor

Private sector lender, Yes Bank, today said the recent 11 per cent divestment by Holland’s Rabobank would be beneficial for the bank’s stock in the medium-and-long-term as the floating stock in the market would increase.

“With more diversity in the ownership base, we will see more velocity and more volumes in the stock which in the medium-to-long-term is good (for the stock),” the bank’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Rana Kapoor, told reporters here.

Rabobank had partly exited their five-year-old investment in Yes Bank last month for Rs 980-crore. The Dutch bank had sold around 11 per cent stake to multiple investors including LIC, some mutual funds and a French institutional investor.

It still holds a 4.9 per cent stake in the bank.

“Their (Rabobank’s) primary consideration for the divestment is to open their own branch network here and the shares have been distributed very widely to investors having a good pedigree,” Kapoor said, after the company’s annual general meeting, here.

When asked about the rationale for pegging its base rate at 7 per cent, Kapoor said the real competition which the bank sees is from the foreign banks who have announced their rates in the same range or lower.

“Moreover, we serve a lot of SMEs and institutional clients,” he said.

Yes Bank aims to attain a balance-sheet size of Rs 1.50-lakh crore by 2015. It aims to increase its branch network to 750 and have a 3,000-strong ATM network by 2015, Kapoor said in his message to shareholders. It currently has 150 operational branches.

In FY 10, the bank had clocked a net profit of Rs 478 crore.