THE Monetary Board, the policy-making body of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, granted authority to State Bank of India to re-open its representative office in the Philippines that ceased operations a few years ago.
Deputy Governor Chuchi Fonacier said in a circular the local office would be known as State Bank of India-Manila Representative Office. It will serve as a liaison office of State Bank of India, which deals directly with the public.
Fonacier said its “function shall be limited to promoting and providing information about the services and products offered by State Bank of India and will not include those of its affiliates.”
The State Bank of India-Manila Representative Office was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 19, 2017. The corresponding certificate of authority to operate as a representative office was issued by Bangko Sentral on July 6, 2017 and its operations started on Oct. 1, 2017.
State Bank of India is a multinational, public sector banking and financial services company. It is a government-owned corporation based in Mumbai, Maharashtra.
On April 1, 2017, State Bank of India merged with five of its associate banks (State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur, State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Patiala, and State Bank of Travancore) and Bharatiya Mahila Bank.
It was the first-ever large-scale consolidation in the Indian banking industry. With the merger, State Bank of India was expected to enter the league of top 50 global banks with a balance sheet size of 33 trillion rupee, 278,000 employees, 420 million customers, and more than 24,000 branches and 59,000 ATMs. SBI’s market share will increase to 22 percent from 17 percent.
The bank has 198 offices in 37 countries and 301 correspondents in 72 countries. The company is ranked 232nd on the Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s biggest corporations as of 2016.
The bank traces its ancestry to British India, through the Imperial Bank of India, to the founding, in 1806, of the Bank of Calcutta, making it the oldest commercial bank in the Indian subcontinent. Bank of Madras merged into the other two “presidency banks” in British India, Bank of Calcutta and Bank of Bombay, to form the Imperial Bank of India, which in turn became the State Bank of India in 1955.