Housing finance giant, HDFC announced financial results for the third quarter of the current financial year. It reported 15 per cent rise in net profit which stands at Rs 542 crore as compared to Rs 471.9 crore in the same quarter last year.

It should be recalled that gain made through the sale of shares in HDFC Standard Life in Q3 of the previous fiscal has not been included while calculating net profit.

London - The British government was Thursday reported to be in talks with Barclays after the bank admitted that raising extra capital from the government could trigger a clause that would deliver control of the bank to its Middle East investors.

Barclays and HSBC are the two major British banks which have so far refused to join a massive recapitalization scheme offered by the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown last October.

The prospect that Barclays, Britain's fourth-biggest lender, could be surrendered to Middle Eastern control has alarmed officials, newspaper reports said.

Leading public sector lender Indian Bank has announced its financial results for the third quarter of the current financial year. The bank posted 14 per cent increase in net profit which stands at Rs 350.70 crore as compared to Rs 307.50 in the same period last quarter.

Its total income increased to Rs 2071.37 crore as compared to Rs 1676.00 crore in previous quarter.

The bank said in a filing before BSE, "The additional segments of corporate banking and retail banking have been included for the quarter and for the nine months ended

Stock market analysts have suggested investors to ‘sell’ ICICI Bank stock with a target of Rs 375.

According to them, interested investors can sell the stock between Rs 385-390 with a strict stop loss of Rs 409.
 
Today (Jan 21), the stock opened at Rs 381, as against its last closure at Rs 397.30 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on Tuesday (Jan 20). Current EPS & P/E ratio stood at 37.03 and 10.28 respectively. The share price has seen a 52-week high of Rs 1300 and a low of Rs 282.15 on BSE.

In the last trading session, ICICI Bank fell by almost 4 per cent penetrating its 50-day moving average.

Melbourne, Jan. 21 : The National Australia Bank (NAB) could be forced to write off millions of dollars invested in its off-shoring program as a result of the Satyam corporate fraud scandal.

According to Fox News, NAB is one of Satyam''s biggest customers in Australia and has already made a significant investment on training and transition costs and redundancy payouts as part of its information technology off-shoring (ITO) program.

London, Jan 20 : Fear of redundancy has spread to almost half of full-time British workers; a poll has showed after a new economic rescue plan was met by plunging bank share prices.

The British Government bailout has sent bank share prices tumbling as 49 per cent of workers said in an Ipsos Mori Survey that they were worried the recession would force them out of their jobs within the next 12 months.

The poll also showed Prime Minister Gordon Brown to be the target for blame -with the Tories gaining 10 points on Labour to lead by 14 points, the Daily Express reported.

Brown on Monday launched another desperate attempt to shore up the economy, gambling potentially hundreds of billions of pounds in an attempt to kick-start lending.