New Delhi: Stating that no banking institution throughout the world could match it in fast decision making, State Bank of India (SBI) on Tuesday has sanctioned one billion dollar credit for Tata group in just five minutes, a philosophy, which has placed it much ahead of challengers on overseas mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions.

O P Bhatt, SBI chairman, said, “SBI has become so nimble that when Tata-Corus did not get that last bit of $1 billion dollar funding, we sanctioned in five minutes... Recently, we have done Rs 12,000 crore. No bank in the world can do this kind of funding in 5-10 minutes. We have been doing it.”

SBI that has showed interest in overseas acquirement of a big unit is already the top contributor on foreign asset building and M&A during the first quarter of the recent fiscal and would remain the same in the coming quarter as well.

Asked if he feared that the aggressive private loaner ICICI Bank could substitute it as the top player in the field, Mr. Bhatt stated, “I am not apprehensive about rise of ICICI Bank... its CEO K V Kamath has gone on record that he is not competing with SBI and that he does not want to overtake SBI. He is the same person who was saying that he will overtake SBI.”

On information that ICICI had swept over the SBI on foreign asset building in recent times, Bhatt declared that SBI was ahead of the rivals.

“Even in terms of foreign assets ICICI Bank has not overtaken us. It has not overtaken in absolute terms but in percentage terms,” he added.