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State-owned Punjab National Bank plans to open a representative office in Dubai, as part of its plan to expand its global footprint. The bank has got the board of directors' approval for opening a representative office in Dubai and the process is on for seeking regulatory clearance, PNB managing director Atul Kumar Goel told PTI. Hopefully, he said, the representative office should come up during the current financial year, if all regulatory approvals are in place. As on March 31, 2024, PNB had presence in six countries by way of two subsidiaries (London-UK and Bhutan), one joint venture (Nepal), two representative offices (Myanmar and Bangladesh). Talking about the strategy to improve profitability, he said, the focus would be on expanding retail, agriculture, MSME (RAM) portfolio, extending good corporate loans, controlling slippages and improving recovery. Besides, he said, the thrust would also be on improving the forex income and garnering higher fee income from selling third-party products to augment non-interest income. With regard to improving interest income, he said, the focus would be to increase low cost deposit CASA (Current Account Savings Account). CASA as a percentage of total deposit stood at 41.4 per cent at the end of March 2024, he said, the target is to improve beyond 42 per cent by the end of the current fiscal year. The bank intends to keep credit cost below 1 per cent during this financial year. With all these efforts, he said, the Return on Assets (ROA) is expected to increase to 0.8 per cent during the year and touch 1 per cent by the end of March 2025, translating into a substantial jump in profit. Asked about anticipated business growth in the current financial year, Goel said, credit growth is expected to be 11-12 per cent, while deposit would be 9-10 per cent. To fund this business growth, the bank has taken approval of raising capital to the tune of Rs 17,500 crore from Tier I and Tier II bonds and share sale through private placement during the year. During FY'24, the bank had raised Rs 10,000 crore from Tier I and Tier II bonds at a very competitive rate, he added.

Bitcoin’s rally to near a record high is reawakening animal spirits — not just in the cryptocurrency market itself, but in the broader financial world that had left the digital asset sector for dead last year.The change of heart can be seen in the improved outlook for deal flow, highlighted by Robinhood Markets Inc.’s purchase of crypto exchange Bitstamp Ltd. on Thursday, to a resurgence of venture-capital investments to what some analysts are expecting to be record amount of initial public offerings of companies connected to the industry.In the crypto market itself, there’s been a notable return of the hallmarks of previous bull markets: Celebrities are once again promoting crypto, and new tokens are being created at a rate of thousands per day, with some 330,000 coins debuting in the Ethereum ecosystem in April and May alone, according to crypto data tracker Dune.Taken all together, it demonstrates that there’s nothing like rising prices to make investors forget about past financial carnage — including bankruptcies of crypto exchange FTX and lender Celsius — in a market that’s most famous for its scandals and boom-and-bust cycles.“Investors often have short memories,” said Campbell Harvey, a finance professor at Duke University. “When market sentiment is high, they put extra weight on good news and tend to downplay the bad news that might have happened in the past.” Bitcoin climbed this week to within 2.5% of the all-time high of $73,798 reached in mid-March amid surging demand for recently authorized exchange-traded funds. While the bellwether digital currency is up almost 70% already this year, the gains pale in comparison to the returns of extremely speculative memecoins such as Dogwifhat and Bonk. 110831412This year’s boom was kicked into high gear when the Securities and Exchange Commission approved ETFs investing directly into Bitcoin in January. Then in May, the agency made a step toward approving similar spot Ether ETFs, a move many in the industry have seen as caving to increased political pressure to legitimize crypto and create new laws that would make it easier for digital-asset companies to operate.US Bitcoin ETFs attracted inflows for an unprecedented 18th straight day through Thursday. Net subscriptions for the group of almost a dozen products stood at $15.6 billion, taking total assets to $62.3 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 110831418Large financial companies are wading deeper into crypto. Earlier this week, Mastercard resumed letting users of the world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance, make purchases on its network. Binance settled with the Justice Department over anti-money laundering and other violations last year, and is still fighting charges from the SEC. “Over the past several months, we have reviewed the enhanced controls and processes that Binance has put into place,” a Mastercard spokesperson said in a statement. “It is based on those efforts that we have decided to allow Binance-related purchases on our network. This status is contingent on ongoing reviews.”Crypto MNA is heating up as well. This week, Bitcoin miner Core Scientific Inc. rejected an unsolicited $1 billion takeover offer from artificial intelligence startup CoreWeave Inc., just days after announcing a partnership. On Thursday, Robinhood said it will acquire Bitstamp for $200 million to expand its crypto business in Europe. “A US regulatory framework creates a velocity of innovation environment that accelerates an institution’s buy-over-build decision-making and drives a robust M&A environment,” Elliot Chun, partner at MNA consultant Architect Partners, said in a recent note. “I will be bold and say that in May 2024, our industry officially transitioned from #TheGreatPurge and entered into #TheGreatSurge.” Crypto funds are flourishing, with more such funds launching in the first quarter than in any time since the second quarter of 2021, according to Crypto Fund Research. Talk of new crypto IPOs is reviving, with Kraken said to be in talks for a pre-IPO funding round, while eyeing an IPO as soon as in 2025, Bloomberg reported Thursday. If crypto prices keep increasing, the next 18 months could see the biggest wave of crypto-related IPOs on record, according to Renaissance Capital, a pre-IPO researcher.“I do think that if these companies can point to explosive revenue growth or strong earnings, that will get investors’ interest,” said Matthew Kennedy, senior market researcher with Renaissance. “I suspect that the financials are there, and that investors will take them with a grain of salt — they know it’s a cyclical business, plenty of companies are like that.”

When you are a leader, how do you ensure those around you feel empowered to speak up? How do you deal with those who have strong, sometimes contrary, views? “We are just ordinary people doing some work and it certainly helps to seek advice,” says Titan MD CK Venkataraman, disclaiming that he is a visionary like Xerxes Desai, founding MD of Titan and Tanishq. Venkataraman may not be Desai but in the four years he has been MD, Titan’s revenue has doubled to Rs 38,569 crore (in 2023) and the market value has soared. He also drove its expansion into other lifestyle categories, using offline and online channels, winning ET’s Business Leader of the Year Award earlier this year. With 18 months to go before he steps down, Venkataraman has encapsulated the journey of Titan’s jewel in the crown, Tanishq, which he helmed, in his new book The Tanishq Story: Inside India’s No. 1 Jewellery Brand (Juggernaut). In a conversation with Indulekha Aravind, the Titan lifer talks about balancing the interest of various stakeholders, securing employee buy-in and life after Titan. Edited excerpts: You write that most decisions are about optimising stakeholder interest. How do you balance the interest of different stakeholders—shareholders, employees, franchisees, vendors etc? Take the Covid period, which is a good example in the context of this question. When Covid hit, I had been MD for barely six months. I was staring at the worst quarter in the history of the company though that was not our fault. But because I had worked in the jewellery business for 15 years, I knew that when people are anxious, they buy jewellery in India. That’s because it’s not an expenditure, it’s a store of value. I knew the industry would recover fast.There was a lot of anxiety around how our company would cut costs and conserve cash. By squeezing employees or vendor partners, the loss the company would have made could have been reduced by 10-20%, which is what many companies were trying to do. But they were not realising the fairness aspect and the practical aspect. The fairness aspect is that in the overall equation when things are going well, shareholders tend to keep a greater part of the prosperity. The employees and vendors get a relatively smaller part though they are the people who are actually working—it’s their innovation, it’s their hard work that creates that value.The practical part was that if employees, vendors and others were anxious, they would not be firing at their best. If they felt cared for, they would help us rebound faster. That came to me very intuitively. So there were no retrenchments, pay cuts were marginal and reversed, advances were given to vendor partners and we helped transport karigars by flight or buses, depending on the situation. We did all that without thinking of the results because it was a fair thing to do. All those people took it upon themselves to give back to the company. The recovery was superfast for our company.A universal challenge and one that you mention is dealing with strong personalities with contrasting views. How do you manage that while also empowering employees at different levels to speak up?On the first, I think it is partly to do with the nature of certain leaders. Xerxes Desai, the founding managing director, was a legendary figure and we were all a little in awe of him. In a sense, that awe may have contributed to some of us not speaking up. Then, it’s also about how the leader is making it easy for the colleagues—(saying) you can correct me, I’m giving you space to question me. When I do this, the timidity reduces. Bhaskar (Bhat), who was MD for 17 years, was always seeking collaboration. I would suggest, recognise that each one of us is fallible and use the collective might of the team to brainstorm, seek feedback and then course-correct. We don’t kid ourselves into thinking that we are visionaries. We are just ordinary people doing some work and it certainly helps to seek advice, suggestions from other people, which we do actively so that we are not missing some big things. On the other point, we have enabled a process of deep participation and innovation. It arises from a belief that everyone, irrespective of her education and qualification, has got something to contribute. Any organisation that capitalises on the power of thousands of people having ideas can be better than those that depend only on those in positions of power. We created many programmes arising out of that.When Tanishq launched its data-based customer loyalty programme, there was resistance, especially from store staff. How do you get employee buy-in for an idea they are resisting?On any new path you start to travel on, especially in an organisational context, there will be some believers in the early stages. You use those believers as champions. You create a use case, some islands of success, using them. And when they speak about it out of their own experience, they become spokespersons for the programme. It’s seen as believable, that it has worked. That creates momentum, accelerates the adoption more and more.You will be stepping down in December 2025. What are your targets for Titan before that and for yourself after? We are on a five-year strategy starting FY2022 and that is painted all the way till FY27. All of us are working towards that. Part of it is making the new businesses of Titan Company leaders in their categories and contributing more in customer share to Titan. The second is making Titan a more international company, with the jewellery business doing exceedingly well outside India, wherever Indians are, that’s the second big thing. About the second part of the question, I’m looking forward to a very relaxed life after December 2025, doing many things myself, with my wife, with our daughters. There are so many things I’m interested in that I keep doing, but I will lift the time that I devote to each—from fitness to cooking and singing. Who do you enjoy reading—any management books?It’s been a while, maybe two-three years, since I read a book. But in the last four-five years, I’ve read all of Michael Sandel’s books. I like what he says and connect with it. In fiction, it’s been a lot of Lee Child but he’s become too volume-focused of late. I’ll get back to reading once I have more time. Management books, I don’t (read), which begs the question, who will read my book? (laughs)You’ll be remembered for a lot of things at Titan & Tanishq—growing the business, increasing market cap, etc. But how would you like to be remembered? That I was one of the nicest guys they ever knew.

Noida: To prevent arbitrariness being done by promoters through the offer of possession letters sent to flat buyers and to eliminate the disputes arising between them due to this, the UP RERA on Saturday said it has made available a model format of the letter on its website. The Uttar Pradesh Real Estate Regulatory Authority (UP RERA) recalled its order issued on May 29 in which it had clarified that the promoters will issue an offer of possession to the allottees in the same format as available on the portal. It had also directed project promoters to make no binding conditions on the allottees in any way through the offer of possession letter, the UP RERA said in a statement. "The promoters send 'final demand letter' and 'final demand notice' using the name and language of 'Offer of Possession', which creates confusion among the allottees, and it carries some binding conditions. 'Offer of Possession' should be meant only for the purpose of taking possession," UP RERA Chairman Sanjay Bhoosreddy said. "Hence, we have made available a model 'Offer of Possession' on the portal and any other format of letter will not be valid. This will remove confusion among the stakeholders and help in disposal of disputes related to it," Bhoosreddy added. After receiving the OC/CC (occupancy certificate/completion certificate) of the project, the offer of possession letters will be sent to the allottees by the promoter in writing to their registered email and residential address by post and they will also be informed by SMS on their respective mobile numbers and phone number, the UP RERA said. "In this regard, the promoter should also display information at the project site and its head office," RERA said. "Keeping in mind the complaints received regarding the Offer of Possession letter issued to the allottees by the promoters and variety of formats of the letter, the Regulatory Authority has uploaded a model format of Offer of Possession so that uniformity can be achieved in the language and purpose of this letter," it added. The core intention of the letter related to 'offer of possession' should be that the allottee is being invited to hand over the possession of his/her unit. If any construction work is still remaining in the unit, the promoter will have to clearly mention the remaining finishing work of the unit and the duration required for completion, it noted. "If the allottee has any liability, then it should not be outside the scope of the Agreement for Sale and its legal justification should be proved. Letters sent using demand notice, final demand notice and offer of possession or similar language will not be considered as Offer of Possession letter," the UP RERA said. It said the offer of possession letters should be sent within two months of receiving OC/CC and at the time of possession, a copy of OC/CC certificate issued by the development authority will also have to be given to the allottees.