: Just a fortnight ago, when United Western Bank (UWB) topped the first-ever customer satisfaction survey of banks, the findings and timing of the survey seemed outlandish. Good customer service at the branch level can indeed be distinct from bad management that ruins profitability, but this logic is hard to accept, especially when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) soon places the bank under moratorium. A few days later the picture changed again. The snaking queues of panic-stricken depositors quickly vanished and UWB seemed on the verge of setting a record in terms of the number of entities jostling to take it over. All this when the real recoverability of its loans is unknown and revival cost cannot be realistically estimated.
A cash-strapped Maharashtra government’s support has led to the offer of a Rs 210-crore revival package of which Rs 70 crore will come from the curious combination of Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC), Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation and the state financial institution — SICOM Ltd. Other bidders are Citigroup, Standard Chartered, ICICI Bank, Canara Bank, Federal Bank, Andhra Bank, Allahabad Bank, Industrial Development Bank of India and UCO Bank. The savvy HDFC Bank is the only frontline bank that has not bid for UWB. Was it asked to stay away by its significant shareholder?
Then there is Indiabulls, an aggressive brokerage firm that hopes to become a bank by acquiring UWB. Behind several of the bids are covert and overt political supporters, who either want to keep control or acquire control of a bank. The media is also pitching in with opinions to support certain bidders.
The list of suitors is so long that it seems set to bury important questions such as why the RBI did nothing as the bank kept piling on bad loans and a former investment banker tried to acquire the bank, probably on behalf of an industrialist. The capital market regulator and stock exchanges also failed to prevent brazen price manipulation for almost a year that allowed UWB to price its recent rights issue at a premium even when losses were mounting.
Sucheta Dalal
