Calcutta, Aug. 16: Punjab National Bank will soon open two more wholly-owned subsidiaries abroad — one in Canada and the other in the UK.

At present, PNB has only one overseas subsidiary, which is in Kabul.

“We have a representative office in London, which will be upgraded to a wholly-owned subsidiary bank.”

PNB has got the Reserve Bank’s approval. It has now filed an application with the monetary authority of the UK for a banking licence.

“The UK authority has already given a go-ahead to our plan to hire personnel and set up information technology infrastructure for banking operations,” said Harwant Singh, general manager, international business, Punjab National Bank.

“In Canada, we will have a new subsidiary and we are going to meet the Superintendent of Financial Institutions on September 8 for this,” Singh added.

The Superintendent of Financial Institutions is the banking regulator of Canada.

The bank will also open a branch office in Hong Kong and an offshore business unit in Singapore this fiscal if the regulatory approvals of the monetary authorities of the respective host countries come through.

According to Singh, PNB has already filed an application with the Hong Kong monetary authority and will meet the banking regulator of Singapore on September 18 with the draft proposal-cum-application for opening an offshore banking unit there.

The public sector bank has earmarked Rs 400 crore as capital requirement for these four overseas units.

PNB has raised Rs 885 crore tier II capital during the first quarter of the current financial year and plans to raise additional Rs 2,100 crore through innovative perpetual debt (tier I capital) and hybrid instruments (tier II capital) this fiscal.

“This will take care of our capital requirement for domestic business growth and overseas expansion,” said a senior PNB official.

At present, PNB has representative offices in Almaty, Dubai, London and Shanghai, accounting for a total international business of $200 million.