India’s largest investment bank here

Giving a sudden boost to Sri Lanka’s mega-infrastructure development landscape, India’s topmost investment bank and the only Indian bank featured in Fortune Global 500, SBI Capital Markets, says it is bullish on Sri Lanka’s post-war infrastructure.

“We are a tried and tested global player in infrastructure development. We usually aim at mega scale projects above $ 25 million.

We believe that collaboration on PPP in large scale infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka can be significant win-win for both.

We are not investing by ourselves but have the capacity to bring in global investors” revealed V. G. Kannan, President and Chief Operating Officer of SBI Capital Markets (SBICM), India on February 7.

Kannan, who is on a two day tour to Colombo with an SBI fact finding mission, met Rishad Bathiudeen, Minister of Industry and Commerce on February 7 at the Ministry premises, Colombo 3.

SBICM is a 100% owned entity of State Bank of India (SBI), the largest commercial bank in India. The government of India owns 61% of SBI. SBICM, a Thompson Reuters ‘Bank of the Year’ award winner, specialises in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as well as mega scale project financing. Among SBICM’s portfolio of 165 global clients are Standard Chartered, HSBC (InvestDirect), FranklinCovey, Bloomberg/UTV, Vodafone, LandRover, IndianOil, Le Meridien, NIIT, and Aditya Birla.

SBICM is also the sole Indian member of M&A International Inc, integrated global alliance of industry-leading advisory and finance firms, with more than 1400 global M &As at $ 85 billion in the past five years.

“We believe that collaboration on PPP in large scale infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka can be significant win-win for both.

As a start, we are planning to host a high level confab with regard to PPP on the infrastructure projects next March in Colombo in association with EuroMoney and Merchant Bank of Sri Lanka (MBSL).

We believe that a defined, sector-wise PPP investment framework by Sri Lanka will help the country to garner higher PPP financing as well as increased investor confidence.