State Bank of India

The State Bank of India (SBI) is the largest Indian banking and financial services company (by turnover and total assets) with its headquarters in Mumbai, India. It is state-owned. The bank traces its ancestry to British India, through the Imperial Bank of India, to the founding in 1806 of the Bank of Calcutta, making it the oldest commercial bank in the Indian Subcontinent. Bank of Madras merged into the other two presidency banks, Bank of Calcutta and Bank of Bombay to form Imperial Bank of India, which in turn became State Bank of India. The government of India nationalized the Imperial Bank of India in 1955, with the Reserve Bank of India taking a 60% stake, and renamed it the State Bank of India. In 2008, the government took over the stake held by the Reserve Bank of India.

The State Bank Group, with over 16,000 branches, has the largest banking branch network in India. SBI has 14 Local Head Offices and 57 Zonal Offices that are located at important cities throughout the country. It also has around 130 branches overseas.

With an asset base of $352 billion and $285 billion in deposits, SBI is a regional banking behemoth and is one of the largest financial institutions in the world. It has a market share among Indian commercial banks of about 20% in deposits and loans. The State Bank of India is the 29th most reputed company in the world according to Forbes. Also SBI is the only bank featured in the coveted "top 10 brands of India" list in an annual survey conducted by Brand Finance and The Economic Times in 2010.

The State Bank of India is the largest of the Big Four banks of India, along with ICICI Bank, Punjab National Bank and HDFC Bank—its main competitors.

As of 31 December 2009, the bank had 157 overseas offices spread over 32 countries. It has branches of the parent in Colombo, Dhaka, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Tehran, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Male in the Maldives, Muscat, Dubai, New York, Osaka, Sydney, and Tokyo. It has offshore banking units in the Bahamas, Bahrain, and Singapore, and representative offices in Bhutan and Cape Town. It also has an ADB in Boston, USA.

by Paul Green