If insiders are to be believed, two months back, at a property exhibitionheld at midtown Mumbai's Bandra-Kurla complex, a register of customerenquiries was stolen, allegedly by a leading financial institution.

But that is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The asset poachingexercise is multi-dimensional. Last month Delhi witnessed another aspect ofthe "war" when ICICI ended up booking some space at Hotel Kanishka whereHDFC was holding its property mela and the direct sales agents (DSAs) of theinstitution were seen wooing prospective HDFC customers away. If the sourcesare to be believed, when HDFC drew the hotel management's attention to thedevelopment, it pleaded helplessness as ICICI had booked the space inadvance.

And this is not the end of the story. At the Delhi property mela, ICICI cutthe processing fees for loans to a flat Rs 1,000 per transactionirrespective of the loan amount (instead of the usual 0.8 per cent of theloan amount). HDFC responded to the ICICI move by waiving the processingfees completely. The net result: HDFC walked away with over a thousand homeloan sanctions at the fair, leaving its competitor high and dry. ICICI couldnot match the HDFC offer as the housing finance major put up theadvertisement (of waiving the processing fees) in the Delhi print media atthe last moment.

Fast forward to Mumbai. March 14: HDFC cut interest rates on home loans andmerged the existing slabs. It painted the town red with advertisementshollering: "Follow the Leader". This is for the first time HDFC officiallydecided to play the role of a "leader" and not a "pioneer" in housingloans-the image it has been projecting so far. ICICI chose to follow the"leader" within 48 hours. It went to the extent of virtually copying theHDFC model by clubbing all the loan slabs and slashing interest rates toidentical levels. But ICICI preferred to keep the revisions close to itschest. Perhaps it was too embarrassed to admit that it was reacting to the"leader".

Customers who called up ICICI for home loans from March 15 could availthemselves of the loans at lower rates of interest but to date there is noofficial statement on the changes in loan rates. The official stance takenby the head of ICICI home loans, Shikha Sharma (even while the new rateswere being offered to customers), was: "ICICI does not want to reviseinterest rates on our retail products at the slightest excuse. We prefer towait for some more time until the interest rates are lowered....." The samedrama was enacted once again on the Internet. Three days after HDFC launchedits website Propertymartindia.com -- a joint venture between HDFC ande-Mahindra -- in Mumbai, ICICI announced the launch of its websiteindiahomeseek.com in Delhi as a one-stop site for real estate matters.ICICI, however, preferred to go it alone without any joint venture partner.