Punjab National Bank (PNB) is looking for consultants to aid in the process of sale of its land and building assets across the country. The Delhi-based lender has floated a tender seeking applications from agencies to assist in the sale of its immovable non-core assets.

“The firms would be empanelled for a period of three years subject to annual review based on the performance,” the tender said. The process is being run as part of PNB’s plan to offload stakes in non-core investments and immovable properties. Last month, the lender had sought bids from process advisors to sell its stakes in Pridhvi Asset Reconstruction and Securitisation Company and National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX).

In a post-results call in January, SS Mallikarjuna Rao, MD & CEO of PNB, said the bank has continued to follow the same approach to sale of assets over the last two years. “We have been pursuing liquidation of or gaining the amount from non-core assets,” he said.

In October 2020, PNB sold a 3% stake in UTI Asset Management Company (AMC) for Rs 180 crore. As for real estate assets, the bank has already sold one of the floors in its erstwhile headquarters at 7, Bhikaji Cama Place and a couple of other floors are also in line for sale.

“In some of them (assets) we have already realised smaller amounts of up to Rs 10 crore. The fundamental principle of the bank where we have identified the non-core assets in two categories – real estate as well as investment assets – we will move forward to sell them. So during the current year as well, there are a good amount of stakes which we kept for liquidating and we are definitely going to gain out of those non-core assets,” Rao said.

He indicated that the bank could sell some more of its shares in UTI AMC. PNB is also in the process of offloading its stake in Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Insurance Company. The bank expects many of these transactions to be concluded in FY23.

The government has not made any provision for capital infusion into public sector banks (PSBs) in FY23 while reducing the outlay for capitalisation in FY22 to Rs 15,000 crore from Rs 20,000 crore. PNB’s capital adequacy ratio (CRAR) improved to 14.91% in December 2021 from 13.88% as at December 2020. The common equity tier-I (CET-1) ratio stood at 10.99%.