The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Bank celebrates 75th anniversary

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 26, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Bank celebrates 75th anniversary

Special Correspondent

BANGALORE: ING Vysya Bank (formerly Vysya Bank) celebrated its 75th anniversary here on July 23, recalling how it withstood trying times during the World War II and lived up to the challenges of economic development in the post-independence era.

The chairman of the bank, G.M. Rao, remembering the founders, said: "In the backdrop of environmental changes we visualised the necessity of a tie-up with a strong global partner and that's how we brought in the partnership with ING. We are fortunate in having ING as our major partner which is one of the top financial conglomerates in the world with an asset base of Rs. 45 lakh crores and profit of Rs. 3.13 lakh crores as on December 2004. In retrospect, the decision has proved right when we see a number of older banks such as Bank of Madura merging with ICICI and many more on the way to losing their identity."

The sustainability of smaller banks will be further challenged owing to stiffer competition and the need to upscale the prudential norms and accounting practices to comply with Basel II and other stiffening regulatory norms.

The managing director, Bart Hellemans, while congratulating the staff for building the bank over the years, said efforts would be to make it a strong brand.

Those present on the occasion included five previous chief executive officers — T.K.K. Bhagavat, Ramesh Gelli, I. Sadasiva Gupta, K.R. Ramamoorthy and K. Balasubramanian.

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