State Bank of India jumped 2.87% to Rs 1592.75 on reports that it is planning to make a holding company for its mutual funds and life insurance business.

About 11.24 lakh shares of the scrip were traded on the BSE counter. The scrip showed an average daily volume of 5.97 lakh shares within the last three months.

During the day, State Bank of India (SBI) touched a high of Rs 1627.70 and a low of Rs 1540. The scrip has had its 52-week high of Rs 1760 on 6 July 2007 and a 52-week low of Rs 795 on 1 August 2006.

In the last 30 days to 1 August 2007, the scrip’s value had fallen 2.16% versus the Sensex’s 0.87% increase. It appended 37.96% in the last one quarter as compared to Sensex’s 6.09% rise.

The company’s equity capital is Rs 526.30 crore, with 52.63 crore outstanding shares of a face value of Rs 10 each.

SBI holds majority stakes in a life insurance venture with Cardiff of France and in an asset management company with Societe Generale. It plans to establish the holding company in coming 2 to 3 months and anticipated the unit to be valued between $5 billion to $7 billion.

The state-run bank is also in search of an associate for general insurance and apparently it is making discussions with three to four firms on this. It is expected to finalize a partner in the recent fiscal year to March 2008.

In the first quarter of the recent year (2007), SBI’s net profit arose 78.5% to Rs 1425.81 over Q1 June 2006. Operating income moved up 27.8% to Rs 12229.09 crore in Q1 June 2007 over Q1 June 2006.