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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (9583)	11/14/1999 2:00:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

Bahrain's Taib Bank to unveil online trading on National Stock Exchange taib.com Mridula Krishna (fe) Dubai, Nov 13: A Bahrain-based bank is to introduce online trading for the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in view of the rising interest in Indian stocks in the Gulf region. Taib Bank has a significant presence in India as it established a merchant banking subsidiary, Taib Capital Corporation Limited, in Bangalore in 1995, followed by a brokerage firm, Taib Securities India, in Mumbai earlier this year. A senior bank official said among its other emerging markets, India had become the biggest earner. Iqbal Mamdani, vice chairman and chief executive officer of the bank, said: "We are very excited about introducing online trading on Indian stocks." Started in 1979, Taib Bank, an international investment and merchant bank based in Bahrain and listed on the Bahrain Stock Exchange, pursues business activities in the regional markets of the Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, Turkey and Central Asia. About 30 per cent of the Taib Bank's clients are non-resident Indians (NRIs). The bank's largest assets are in theU.S. and about 15 per cent are in the emerging markets of India, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Egypt. But India is the largest earner for the Taib Bank among these emerging markets, followed by Turkey. Mamdani said Gulf investors were taking a close look at opportunities in India. Cash-rich Gulf investors, who invest heavily in global markets as domestic markets offer less opportunities, have tended to ignore India. But things are beginning to change as, says Mamdani, the Gulf investor has begun to look positively at investments in India." "Gulf investors are willing to put 15 per cent of their funds in emerging markets, compared to almost none in the past. Investors are quick to be nervous, especially as emerging markets are volatile," he was quoted as saying by the Gulf Daily News. Taib Bank will continue to focus on software as India has a vast potential in this sector in the next five years. It is one of the most active players in the Indian software market. "(Taib Bank has) a two-pronged approach comprisingstrategic investment in companies in which the bank has more than a 10 per cent equity stake and in publicly quoted companies in which it has up to 4.9 per cent stake," he said. "We have a stake in about 20 Indian companies and we have been extremely pleased with what we have done," said Mamdani. In 1993, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) approved it as a foreign institutional investor (FII). "We thought we would base ourselves in Bangalore, rather than Mumbai, to take advantage of the growth in the international software market," he said. Earlier this month, Taib Bank and its co-investors announced the exit from a private equity investment in Silverline Holdings Inc., which is engaged in the information technology (IT) business and has a wholly owned subsidiary in the US, headquartered in New Jersey. It also owns and controls a company in India that is listed on the Indian stock exchanges. In January 1997, Taib invested in Silverline's business, with the bank and its co-investors makingthe investment in stages during 1997-1998. In September, the management group, together with its strategic US investors, purchased Taib's and its investors' holdings for $68 million, bringing in a return of 110 per cent to the bank's investors.