State Bank of India buys Indonesian bank

At an address on contemporary and future issues in Indian banking early this year, V Leeladhar, Deputy Governor of India's central bank, told the audience that the, "The notion that the State Bank of India (SBI) can compete in the international arena seems far fetched at the moment". To corroborate this statement, he cited The Banker magazine's ranking of the world's top 1,000 banks. This stated that India's largest bank ranked number 82 with assets of $91 billion in 2004 and was not even one tenth the size of Sumitomo Mitsui, which ranked ninth with assets of $950 billion.