A formal announcement on the changes is expected to be made on Thursday.

Through the better part of Wednesday, BankAm's retail division in Mumbai was cooped up in meetings at a south Mumbai hotel. Quite a few jobs are said to be on the line. A severance package of two year's pay is believed to have been offered to some. None of the BankAm officials was available for comment. The meeting was on at the time of going to the press.

At least six financial intermediaries--ABN Amro Bank, American Express Bank, HongkongBank, GE Caps, Citibank, and ICICI Ltd--plan to make a pitch for the BankAm assets, which may fetch the bank a small premium, as BankAm's netnon-performing assets (NPAs) are zero in March 1998--a performance which it has maintained for almost three consecutive years.

Sources said that the new management at BankAm had offered a few of the 150 retail staff--the bank has 600-odd employees--a chance to relocate within the bank. According to a senior management consultant, however, such relocation exercises are largely ineffective. Citing the example of the downsizing currently on at ANZ Grindlays Bank, he said: "People were offered a relocation option, but nothing much came out of it."

The impending sale should lead to a shake-out in retail banking, because, once through, BankAm's disposal of the assets business will be the country's biggest ever sale of assets by a bank, with the would-be buyer emerging as an aggressive exponent of the `growth-through-acquisition' strategy on this front.

Bankam's decision to get out from its retail assets comes at a time when others like ABN Amro Bank, American Express Bank, GE Caps, and ICICI Ltd are gettinginto the retail business in a big way. HongkongBank may also follow suit. For Citibank, too, acquiring this portfolio will be a huge leap in its growth curve for the retail-banking business.

For relatively new entrants in retail banking, BankAm's move is a god-send. It gives them an opportunity to grow their retail assets by acquisition rather than do it in a time-consuming and organic way. This strategy was first executed by GE Caps with the acquisition of SRF Finance. ICICI Ltd did so with ITC Finance and Anagram Finance. Both these deals were bailouts, but met the needs of the institution, which seeks to position itself as a universal bank.

Of BankAm's asset base of Rs 3,884.40 crore as on March 31, 1998, nearly Rs 1,200 crore is said to be in retail. Market estimates put the car-loan portfolio at over Rs 800 crore. While it could not be ascertained how many accounts in the car-loan baggage lay in the financing of relatively older automobile models, there are chances that this may affect the finalvaluation of the retail portfolio.