Is ICICI bank going to collapse by virtue of Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy?

1. One of the readers had queried regarding losses of ICICI bank due to bankruptcy of Lehman brothers and likely bailout of AIG and same is listed in succeeding paragraphs. However one need not worry as situation is under control and thus one need not rush to bank for drawl of fund as ICICI bank is having sound financial backing and has systems in place to avoid any crumble due to wrong investment decisions.

2. ICICI Bank has MTM loss of about Rs 309 crore investment in instruments of troubled US financial giants like Lehman Brothers and AIG where MTM is based on the market value of underlying securities and thus it keeps varying and one must consider it as a notional loss; however the same is reflected in the balance sheet.The point here to note is that the London subsidiary of ICICI Bank had USD 80-million exposure in the senior bonds of Lehman Brothers and the said exposure has been disclosed to RBI as per its prevalent guidelines.

3. One need not worry as ICICI Bank Joint Managing Director Chanda Kochhar issued a statement in which she stated that the investment by the subsidiary constitutes less than one per cent of the total assets of the subsidiary and less than 0.1 per cent of the consolidated total assets of the ICICI Group and one must appreciate the size of the ICICI group by visualising this figure which is Rs 484,643 crore as its consolidated assets as on 30 June 2008.

4. So one need not worry regarding the safety of funds with ICICI bank as I too have a salary account with them and am having full faith in their system as the loss is minuscule when compared with total consolidated assets