Barclays to start India wealth unit in Q4 2008
MUMBAI, Sept 1 (Reuters) - British bank Barclays (BARC.L) expects to launch wealth management business in India in the final quarter of 2008, and plans to build a team of more than 100 by the first half of next year.
Chief executive Satya Bansal told a media briefing on Monday that the unit, which will formally launch operations in the last three months of the year, has 57 staff and is looking to nearly double the headcount in the next six to eight months.
Barclays already has investment and retail banking operations in India, Asia's third-largest economy.
"We are trying to expand the relation now to private banking," said Bansal, who joined the firm from ICICI Bank's (ICBK.BO) South East Asia private banking unit last year. he said.
Last December, consulting firm Celent said India had around 356,000 households with more than $125,000 of funds that could be invested.
India's wealth management industry is expected to quadruple its size to manage about $1 trillion of assets in five years, an opportunity that has attracted the likes of Citigroup (C.N), Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX)
Bansal, who will also compete with local players such as JM Financial (JMSH.BO) and Kotak Mahindra Bank (KTKM.BO), said Barclays' global experience would help in a country where one in every three wealthy investors was looking to invest abroad.
He said the wealth unit would have a presence in the cities of Mumbai, New Delhi and Bangalore by the end of 2008 and expand to Chennai and Kolkata in 2009. (Reporting by Nishant Kumar; Editing by John Mair)
