Courtesy-Business Standard
The half ownership of a bank in India which is a price that has eluded many of the nation’s pedigree tycoons is going to be taken by BharatPe which is a barely three-year-old payment startup.
Ever since Jaspal Bindra’s (who will own the other half) reign at Standard Chartered Plc as the top Asia banker ended amid a heap of losses in India and Indonesia, for this chance, has had to wait for six years.
For much of the past decade, the in-principle approval for BharatPe and Bindra is like a capital-starved hell that has been the country’s banking system. To help in removing the debris of a scam-tainted small lender, the regulator is rewarding the duo for agreeing to the same. The Reserve Bank of India had to halt the Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank depositors from freely accessing their money to prevent a run. After making 70 per cent plus of its loans to one bankrupt shantytown developer, the Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank collapsed.
Tasked with creating small-ticket loans to unbanked sections of the population, after two years and two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, the stuck savers came out with a resolution, according to which, BharatPe and a unit of Bindra’s Centrum Capital Limited shall put their financial businesses into a newly-licensed bank.
Along with the moth-eaten assets, it will have to be assumed by the new lender at least some of the liabilities of the troubled PMC bank, for the privilege of getting that license.