ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL) has signed separate agreements with consortia of international banks for raising $2.5 billion offshore borrowings to fund the acquisition of a minority stake in an offshore gas field in Mozambique. The first agreement is signed with a consortium of international banks, including ANZ, Bank of Nova Scotia.

State Bank of India (SBI) will invest Rs 150 crore to establish a facility in the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) at Gandhinagar. GIFT city is an initiative of Gujarat government to develop a hub for financial institutions.

The alarming increase in bad loans from infrastructure was partly responsible for restructuring of bank loanks. B Sriram, Managing Director, State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur, which saw a fall in its profits in the quarter ending December,

To supplement its working capital requirements, Hyderabad-based IVRCL is to raise Rs 1,200 crore and infuse capital into new projects. To facilitate fund-raising, the construction and infrastructure company has enlisted the services of SBI Caps, sources said.

The Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram has said that top 30 loan defaulters of public sector banks (PSBs) account for more than one-third of total gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of State-run lenders. The Minister told this to the Rajya Sabha on December 10.

Before next March, the State Bank of India (SBI) plans to raise Tier-II capital of about Rs 5,000 crore. The bank had announced earlier that it plans to raise over Rs 9,000 crore in Tier-I capital through the qualified institutional placement (QIP) route to strengthen its core capital.

In a Trichy road project, SBI Macquarie Infrastructure Trust has bought 74 per cent for Rs 275 crore. The road project stake has been developed by IJM of Malaysia and Shapoorji Pallonji.

In the last June-quarter, government-owned banks recovered only Rs 1,416 crore from loan defaulters while adding more than twice that amount by way of non-performing assets during the same period. Such recoveries have mostly come from smaller borrowers, even as the Union Finance Ministry is focused on the top 30 non-performing accounts in public sector banks.

The Union government's disinvestment department has been on a roadshow in five nations including Germany and the UK to attract foreign investors for its Rs 9,000-crore Coal India's five per cent stake sale. The roadshows are being held in New York, Boston and San Fransisco in the US, followed by Toronto in Canada and London in the UK, sources in the government said.