Temasek Holdings has acquired shares of ICICI Bank. The Singapore’s government owned investment company has bought 2.55 million American depositary receipts of the bank worth $18 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Temasek added to its investments in India in the background of the banks being given a deadline of March 2017 to clean up their balance sheets of bad debts. The proportion of Indian banks’ stressed assets, which include restructured and soured loans, to total advances surged to a 16-year high of 11.5% as of 31 March. ICICI Bank had posted a 25% drop in first-quarter profit as provisions for bad debts rose. In April, the bank reserved Rs 36 billion for possible defaults by companies in sectors including cement, power and mining, an amount that came on top of the Rs 33 billion it put aside to cover soured loans in the March quarter.
