ANZ Opens Mumbai Branch

ANZ Bank's (ASX:ANZ) is putting Asia in the spotlight. The banking giant said that the continent is forecast to be the major revenue source in its "aggressive" growth in the Asia-Pacific, Europe and America (APEA) region.

ANZ has opened a branch in Mumbai, its first in India. APEA chief executive Alex Thursby said that 70 staff are already in India and he hopes to ramp up this number to about 200 or 300 employees in the coming years.

The bank plans to provide debt funding and advisory services to top 250 financial institutions and corporations in the country.

"We basically have two models that we're building. The first model is the franchise model where we have a limited branch network where we build an institutional, commercial and retail model," said Thursby.

"Ultimately we will do that in India. Because of regulatory constraints and us just wanting to pace investment, we lead with the institutional bank."

The Reserve Bank of India granted ANZ licence to operate last October. ANZ is the second Australian bank to expand to India, following Commonwealth Bank of Australia which opened its first branch in the country in 2010.

The ANZ group booked a full year 2.67 billion net profit in the period to end of March 2011.