At a recent meeting, we find increased confidence in the management on various parameters, even as nothing much has changed on the ground level yet. It remains confident about 3-5% higher-than-industry growth and new stressed assets at R6,500 crore with a positive bias and specific credit costs at 75-80 bps.

“Most private banks continued to report healthy asset quality, driven by the retail segment. Though there is some visible stress in the corporate sector, this remains manageable, given limited exposure...Some banks, with meaningful exposure to power, infrastructure, etc, have been reducing their exposure through recent years,” Deutsche Bank said in a note, after analysing the annual reports of private banks for 2013-14.

ICICI Bank, the largest private sector lender in India, closed last financial year with 72,226 employees compared to 35,256 staff at the end of March 2010. HDFC Bank increased its headcount to 68,165 from 51,888, while Axis Bank almost doubled its number of employees to 42,420 during this period.

Sell-off was visible in the broader markets as well with both the mid and small cap indices down over 1% each, taking a breather after several weeks of outperformance.