"We are very much open to this idea. If any private sector bank with a reasonable hold in the country's banking sphere come to us with a merger proposal, we will consider it with great importance," he said.

According to him the voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) got a tremendous response. Around 1,700 employees have opted for availing the scheme. "We are paying the whole amount in cash at a one time basis. A total corpus of 85 crore will be needed for funding the scheme,'' he added.

The bank will announce its initial public offer Wednesday (Jan24). Mr Vasanthan said that the IPO offer of Rs 150 crore will take care of the bank's long-term capital enhancing plan.`` We are thinking to come up with the offer since last year. The bank feels that this point of time is very convenient to access the market as we are in a growth path for last couple of years,'', he said adding that he is confident of an overwhelming responses from the investors for the issue which will result in a oversubscription of the bank's issue. After the issue, the government's shareholding will come down to 66.66 per cent.

The lead managers for the offer will be SBI Capital Markets Ltd with MCS Ltd as the registrar to the issue. There is a reservation for the banks employees to the extent of 10 per cent. The bank's operating profit stood at Rs 289 crore for the financial year 1999-2000. Deposits and advances stood at 16,083 crore and 6,630 crore as on September 30, 2000. "We have projected deposits and advances for the financial year 2000-2001 at Rs 18,500 crore and Rs 8,000 crore respectively,'' he said.