Merrill Lynch to double pvt banking biz

Global financial services major Merrill Lynch is planning to double its private banking business in the country, with an aim to provide financial services for the growing wealthy population.

Merrill Lynch, which provides wealth management advisory service to High Networth Individuals (HNI), is aggressively building the private client business in India with an aim to double the number of its financial advisers this year and is also planning to expand into tier-II cities.

"Merrill Lynch is aggressively building the private client business in India and will invest in people, technology and infrastructure to support expansion plans. We plan to double the number of financial advisers this year, which already doubled from the year before," Merrill Lynch head of India Global Private Client Rahul Malhotra said.

Read more at The Economic Times

Lok Sabha passes banking regulation bill

Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2007, will offer RBI flexibility on SLR front

The Lok Sabha today passed the Banking Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 2007, which aims at allowing more operational flexibility to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in the conduct of monetary policy.

The bill seeks to amend Section 24 of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 to enable the RBI to specify the statutory liquidity ratio without any floor rate. At present, banks are required to invest a minimum of 25% of their deposits in government securities, as dictated by the statutory liquidity ratio (SLR).