ComBank envisages 12 to 15% growth

Commercial Bank's Managing Director and CEO Jegan Durairatnam said that the Bank will have a 12 percent to 15 percent growth in the next two to three years and was also planning expanding to international operations as well.

"Our bank had been listed with CSE from 1970 and since then we have grown with the Exchange. A platform such as this provides companies with a capacity to help enhance their visibility on the world stage. Our association with the Stock Exchange has been rewarding and positive," said Durairatnam when Commercial Bank of Ceylon (COMB) opened trading on Monday at the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) as part of Market Opening tradition where companies that are listed under the S&P SL20 index are invited to do so.

Commercial Bank is Sri Lanka's third largest company to be listed, in terms of market capitalization in the Stock Market, hovering around US$ one billion.

He said that they are also planning to set up a branch at Myanmar and at present the Bangladesh operations are performing well due to the best management practices of the bank activities.

Durairatnam said that good capital management, strong risk management, corporate governance and the continuous educating the staff has lead the bank in the right path with more skill-full persons. He also said they were also planning to penetrate into micro financing sector in the country.

Association with CSE paves the way to enhance their image in the world arena and intend to expand their operations to other countries as well and that due to excellent management practices they also have been able to reduce the non-performing loan ratio as well.

CSE Chairman, Vajira Kulatilaka said that the CSE was in the process of working to further enhance and introduce new products in line with features such as risk management and short-selling, while also striving to provide better IT systems that would attribute user-friendly features at better levels.

"We are sure everyone involved in this sector would like to see a much more comfortable and convenient trading of debt instruments. A known fact is that interest rates go up in the market and nothing can be done other than to wait until the market settles. Commercial Bank of Ceylon (COMB) opened trading at the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) as part of a Market Opening tradition where companies that are listed under the S&P SL20 index are invited to do so.

But, with new products such as short-selling, things can change. What we will do is bring that type of a complete range of products of this caliber to witness a complete Capital Market. Our expectation is your participation and backup on our road shows and help us take Sri Lanka into a different platform. Sri Lanka needs capital, up from the government and down to the SME who will need capital to grow, Kulatilaka said.

Courtesy: Daily News 03 June 2015