Axis Bank on Wednesday said it has completed the acquisition of Citibank’s retail business in India for a final cash consideration of Rs 11,603 crore.
The sale excludes Citi’s institutional client businesses in India. The third-largest private sector bank said the acquisition, announced first in March last year, will not necessitate any new capital requirements and stressed that the attrition numbers on customers are much better than expected.
A total of 2.4 million Citi customers in the country have consented to bank with Axis Bank after the deal as against 3 million at the time of announcing the deal, managing director and chief executive Amitabh Chaudhry told reporters in Mumbai.
He said 96 per cent or 3,200 of the Citi employees have joined the bank now.
The core capital buffer will go down by 1.70 per cent from the 15.55 per cent reported in December, Chaudhry said, committing to fund and grow the business.
The entire integration will happen over the next 18 months, Chaudhry said, adding that there will be a hit of Rs 1,500 crore to be taken as implementation costs which will be amortised as the costs are incurred.
Chaudhry said the bank account details, cheque books, product benefits and privileges, debit card details will be the same for the Citi customers who are joining as Axis Bank customers.
Axis Bank is the fourth-largest issuer of credit cards with a total base of 8.6 million cards and the deal will add about 2.5 million credit cardholders, making it one of the top three cards businesses in the country.
Last year, Axis Bank agreed to purchase Citibank’s India Consumer Business from Citibank NA (acting through its branch in India) and the NBFC Consumer Business from Citicorp Finance (India) Limited (CFIL), as going concerns, without values being assigned to individual assets and liabilities to either business.