Stock Spotlight: ICICI Bank piques interest of EM managers

Second largest private bank

ICICI Bank, India’s second-largest private bank, has become an attractive option for many emerging market managers.

It is now enjoying a premium over HDFC bank, which used to be the highest valued bank in India. However, the ICICI's stock price has sat relatively flat throughout 2022, and is down 7.4% in the last year, according to data from Bloomberg. Nevertheless, emerging market managers are still expressing great interest in the bank. Nick Price, portfolio manager of the Fidelity Emerging Markets trust, argued that ICICI's plateauing stock price over the year "masks variation", after it sold off at the start of the year as the macroeconomic outlook darkened, before rising after strong Q1 res...