After the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) rejected the proposed merger of Indiabulls Housing Finance with Lakshmi Vilas Bank, the mortgage financier on Wednesday said that rejection of amalgamation by the central bank is closure and a relief for us.
In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Ajit Kumar Mittal, executive director, said, "This was one of the several opportunities that come your way along the path when you are in the financial services sector. We thought probably this was a sort of natural evolution for us to transform more into a very long term platform where we have access to a retail sustainable liability platform."
"If you look at all the metrics - our profitability, net interest margin, the cost to income ratio, we are much better placed than we would be as a bank. However, I do agree that if you are looking at 10-20 years from now, this was the way to go. Having said that one always knew that this is subject to regulatory approval and they have their own view. So, they must have considered a host of factors and this is fine for us. In fact, it is a sense of relief and we move on from here," Mittal said.
He further added, "This doesn't mean the end of the road as far as our journey as a financial services player is concerned. We are one of the best in the industry, we are adequately capitalised with a very robust balance sheet. The sector, of course, has been going through a tough time over the last year."
"For the last 5-6 months, we were the target of very vicious attacks from some of the vested interests, some of them could be our rivals, some of them blackmailers, professional racketeers, all those kind of things were going on. All this public interest litigation, that is also part of the same racket and there is not an iota of truth," Mittal said.
(Edited by : Niral Sharma)
First Published: Oct 9, 2019 11:10 PM IST