India's Kotak Mahindra Bank, the former local partner of Goldman Sachs, has become one of the first financial groups in the country to take steps towards seeking overseas acquisitions.
The bank has appointed Hasan Askari, an investment banker and former member of the executive committee at Old Mutual, as an advisor with a mandate to expand the group's business globally, including potential acquisitions.
Uday Kotak, executive vice-chairman and managing director of Kotak Mahindra Group, did not give details on specific takeover opportunities. However, he said: "We will be open to looking at options [for acquisitions] as long as it is something that fits into our core strategy, which is growing the franchise in the Indian market."
India's industrial and telecoms conglomerates have become increasingly aggressive over the past 18 months in making cross-border acquisitions, with the trend continuing in spite of the global credit crunch.
Bharti Airtel, the country's largest mobile operator, has begun talks with South Africa's MTN for a merger that could be valued at about $45bn and that would be the largest cross-border deal by an emerging markets company in Asia.
This comes after a swathe of deals in the past 18 months by the Tata Group, which last year bought Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus for £6.7bn and has agreed to pay $2.3bn for Jaguar and Land Rover, the UK-based luxury marques.
However, India's financial groups, which are highly profitable and were shielded from the worst of the subprime crisis by the country's conservative regulatory regime, have yet to follow suit.
This is in spite of increasing opportunities for acquisitions in the developed world where valuations of banks and financial assets have fallen sharply following the credit crunch.
Kotak Mahindra is the fourth-largest Indian private sector financial group by market capitalisation, with a stock market value of $7bn.
Mr Kotak said Mr Hasan would seek to expand the group's portfolio overseas in all of its major areas of business, which range from commercial banking to investment banking advisory services, asset management and private equity.
Mr Hasan was with Old Mutual until last year and prior to that worked with SG Warburg and Barclays.
Mr Kotak said the group's focus would be on "global clients wanting exposure to India" and Indians wanting to invest overseas.
The appointment also signals an awareness on the part of Kotak of the need for a stronger global presence following the dissolution of its investment banking partnership with Goldman Sachs in 2005.
In recent years, most of the Wall Street banks operating in India have sold out of their joint ventures, including Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, leaving their local partners with large pay cheques but deprived of the global reach they formerly enjoyed.
While Kotak has offices in London, New York, Singapore and Dubai, these have mainly had a more narrow focus on asset management and Indian equities broking.
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