Low risk, high reward: The secret at the world's most expensive bank HDFC !!!

When reports surfaced in July that Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd was struggling for survival, several of its creditors were caught off-guard. Not HDFC Bank Ltd Even as Deccan, which also owned a glitzy cricket team, sought to reassure markets that it held enough assets to stave off a crisis, HDFC Bank was busy getting rid of the loans extended to the group, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. That agility paid off: Deccan has since lost its cricket franchise and its lenders, including heavyweight ICICI Bank Ltd , Axis Bank Ltd and a dozen others, have been left with bad loans totaling $750 million. "Alertness and the ability to pick early signs of problems have helped," Paresh Sukthankar, executive director at HDFC Bank, told Reuters in an interview, pointing to the bank's low bad loans of 0.9 per cent of its book compared with 4.2 per cent expected for the industry by March.