SBI takes aim at retail-banking customers with balances of at least $10,000. State Bank of India (SBI) is launching a wealth-management division to provide financial-planning and investment services. The Mumbai-based bank has already pitched its private-client offerings to about 30,000 of its customers with more than the equivalent of $10,000 on deposit.

In all, SBI says it has over a million customers with the requisite balances to qualify for its new private-client group's services.

Capgemini

SBI, India's biggest lender, has already hired and trained 1,200 "financial managers" -- and it's in the process of hiring another 1,200 with a view to having an advisor force of 5,000 within a few years.

Last year India led the world in high-net-worth population growth, according to the 2008 World Wealth Report, which is published by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini. It added 23,000 individuals with the equivalent, at least, of $1 million in financial assets for a total of 123,000 -- a gain of 23%.

In a bid to capture more of the country's growing investment-banking, retail-brokerage and wealth-management markets for themselves, several big international firms have unraveled joint ventures with local players in recent years.

Morgan Stanley pulled the plug on Mumbai-based JM Morgan Stanley, an eight-year-old joint venture with Mumbai-based JM Financial, a few months ago. Goldman Sachs ended a partnership with Indian businessman Uday Kotak in March 2006. Merrill went from being the junior partner in a joint venture with Mumbia-based DSP to owning nearly all of it in 2005.

Measured by number of branch offices and employees SBI is the second largest bank in the world. India's central bank owns 60% of it -- and has done since the mid 1950s. -FWR

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