Old Indian private sector banks are fast losing their market share to new rivals and facing a slowdown in business growth, Dun & Bradstreet said in a report released late on Tuesday.

The deposits of old private sector banks grew by 6 percent during the year to March 2007 while advances grew by 12 percent during the same period, it said.

The industry average for the same was 25 percent for deposit growth and 31 percent for advances, it said.

The report covered 80 scheduled commercial banks including 23 private sector banks. Private players included older ones such as Federal Bank, South Indian Bank, Karur Vysya Bank and City Union Bank, among others.

The more aggressive new private banks included ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank> and Kotak Mahindra Bank.

Dun & Bradstreet also pointed out consolidation would be one of the key issues that might emerge in the Indian banking industry in the near term.

It also said Indian banking industry was considered too fragmented by global standards with the top 10 banks accounting for 65 percent of the banking assets and about 40 banks sharing 27 percent of the assets.

"Given the significance of scale in the global banking industry, too many banks sharing a low market share might lead to inefficiencies that could hinder sustained growth," the report said.


Courtesy : THEFINANCIALEXPRESS.COM

Google Inc won approval on Tuesday from the European Commission of its planned acquisition of DoubleClick Inc and promptly closed the deal, sending its stock 6 percent higher.

The move will allow the Web search and advertising leader to accelerate its move into the market for corporate banner and display ads, where it has little business, and fulfill an expansion plan that has been on hold for a year.

Separately, a New York federal judge capped possible damages media conglomerate Viacom Inc can seek in its $1 billion lawsuit alleging Google was negligent allowing pirated programs on its YouTube online video sharing service.

The raft of favorable news, coming on a buoyant day for U.S. stock Markets when the Dow Jones index closed up 3.6 percent, countered a string of bad news that has had Wall Street debating whether Google's rapid growth is slowing.

Google shares enjoyed a minor rally, gaining 6.3 percent to $440, as the stock began to reverse a sharp decline since the start of 2008, when it stood near $700.

Shares hit 17-month lows on Monday and remain off 36 percent so far this year after jumping 50 percent in 2007.

The Web search leader has been hampered in moves to expand into the market for corporate brand ads through its 2007 merger with DoubleClick and into the emerging video advertising market through its acquisition of YouTube in 2006.

"Google has kind of languished strategically over the past year," Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay said. "The strategy for 2007 was really put on ice for quite some time."

"It looks like Google is starting to make headway," the Wall Street analyst said. "They are coming back on something of a roll -- the wait-and-see period is coming to an end."

The EU approval of the $3.1 billion DoubleClick deal came despite objections from rivals and privacy advocates and followed an in-depth investigation by European competition officials. The merger, announced a year ago, was given a go-ahead by U.S. antitrust authorities late last year.

Software giant Microsoft, Internet rival Yahoo and AT&T Inc, the largest U.S. telephone company, had pressed regulators to block the Google-DoubleClick deal, arguing it gave Google too much power in online ad Markets.

Within hours of the European Commission's approval of the DoubleClick deal, Google announced it had sealed the deal.

Google says it has been limited by law from making detailed integration plans with DoubleClick, but by early April it expects to have...

Courtesy : THEFINANCIALEXPRESS.COM