INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
bad and getting worse: economic growth is slowing, loan losses are rising and shadow banks are mired in crisis.
And yet investors keep
Among the 25 biggest lenders globally, no other stock commands a higher price relative to earnings or net assets.
Bulls say they have good
reasons to be optimistic: HDFC Bank will grab market share from embattled shadow lenders and benefit from a flight to quality by investors
looming retirement of its longtime leader -- even they say betting against HDFC Bank is risky
Nick Payne, the London-based head of global emerging markets at Merian Global Investors (UK), which oversees about $33 billion and has been
adding to its holdings of HDFC Bank shares
recently a growing competitive threat to HDFC Bank and its peers, have been reeling since the latter half of 2018, when a group company of
Infrastructure Leasing - Financial Services defaulted on its debt and triggered an industrywide credit squeeze
Mortgage lender Dewan Housing Finance Corp has missed debt payments since June, while firms including Reliance Capital and Piramal Capital -
Housing Finance have had their credit ratings cut on liquidity concerns.
The turmoil has come against a backdrop of five straight quarters
of slowing economic growth, the highest unemployment rate in 45 years, and predictions that bad loans at Indian banks will jump to a record
Now valued at about $92 billion, the company trades for 24 times projected earnings over the next 12 months
everyone is convinced the outsized gains will continue
Gautam Chhugani, an analyst at Sanford C
Bernstein - Co., downgraded HDFC Bank to market perform from outperform on Sept
profit growth and stable asset quality for the quarter ended September, Diksha Gera, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a report
for emerging market equities at Aviva Investors Asia Pte
investment director at Aberdeen Standard Investments in Singapore
