M&A

M&A

RBI gives nod for PMC Bank to be taken over by Centrum-BharatPe JV

Business Standard  

The joint venture floated by Centrum Group and digital payments startup BharatPe for launching a small finance bank will infuse INR 1,800 crore capital into troubled Punjab & Maharashtra Cooperative Bank (PMC) on its merger with the proposed bank. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) gave an in-principle approval to Centrum Financial Services, a step-down arm of the diversified financial services group, to set up a small finance bank (SFB) provided it takes over the troubled PMC Bank. This paves the way for ending nearly two anxious years for PMC depositors whose over INR 10,723 crore is still stuck in the crippled cooperative bank that has been under RBI administrator since September 2019. To launch the SFB, the Centrum Group has sewed up an equal joint venture with Resilient Innovations, an arm of Gurugram-based BharatPe. Centrum Capital will be the promoter of SFB, under the prevailing laws. The groups have allocated nine-times more capital over the RBI mandate of INR 200 crore for the SFB.