YES Bank’s Gill confident of raising more than $500m, says plan B & C in place

Yes Bank CEO and MD Ravneet Gill on Wednesday said the bank is confident of raising more than $500 million in this round of funding and there are plan B and C in place to ensure this.

His views came after the lender, which has been struggling to raise funds, on Tuesday said it was looking at raising $500 million of the $2 billion target, putting a question mark on its ability to mop up the badly-needed capital. “The $500 million figure is being looked at favourably,” he said.

Gill said Canadian investor Erwin Singh Braich’s offer is not off the table and discussion is still on.


In an exclusive interaction with ETNow, he said if bank is unable to raise $2 billion, then it will have moderate growth going forward. “The fundraising plan is very much on track. We have a Plan B and C in place,” he said.

Gill said the bank will disclose other bids to the market once they become binding. “This is important to understand that the bank has shown the ability to raise capital in the past place. YES Bank is confident of raising much more than $500 million,” Gill said, adding that it is also in detailed discussions with several institutional investors.

Full Interview: Braich’s $1.2b bid not off the table; discussions still on, says Ravneet Gill, YES Bank CEO

“We have some good institutional investors who have shown interest in the bank,” he said.

The CEO said $500 million is not a small amount. “It will add 1.1 per cent to bank’s CET-1.”

Citax Holdings and Citax Investment Group, funds led by one Srinivas Solaraj, have made the offer to invest $500 million, the bank informed stock exchanges on Tuesday after the board meeting.

“We have completed due diligence on Citax Holdings. We believe RBI will look at Citax’s offer favourably. Braich has not invested a lot in India. There is a lot of due diligence to be done,” he said, adding that YES Bank wanted to be completely sure that there is an alignment of interest between the bank and Braich.

“We’d rather take a completely well-thought-through decision, than work in haste. We want to make sure RBI’s proper and fit criteria is met, so there is no hurdle on the approval,” he said.


Reacting to the developments, the scrip traded over 3 per cent down at Rs 48.70 in the early trade on Wednesday. The benchmark BSE Sensex was up 71 points, or 0.18 per cent, at 40,310.

“We respect market’s impatience and apologise for that,” Gill said.

The bank chief said he hopes to announce a fund-raising decision before December-end. “The bid from a large US institutional investor is off the table. We would not recommend an offer to board if we are not too comfortable with it.” he said.

“Other bids are still on the table, it is just a matter of addressing the largest bidders first. We will continue to evaluate other potential investors to raise up to $2 billion” he said.

YES Bank’s board will hold the next meet before 2019-end. The agenda of the next board meeting is to get more clarity on the overall fundraise size, he said.