NEW DELHI: On Friday, the public sector banks have been able to weather the financial storm, when Sensex crashed by 801 points. When most of the sectors across the board fell like nine-pins in the stock markets, shares of government owned banks like SBI, Canara Bank, Union Bank, Oriental bank of Commerce, and Indian Overseas Bank bucked the trend and appreciated.

Among the 13 gainers among the large-cap companies on BSE, five are from government owned banks. Besides them, two are from health care sectors - Ranbaxy and Glenmark. The main reason behind the appreciation of Ranbaxy shareis the recent decision of an US justice department to withdraw the legal suit against the company, regarding quality of the product.

When banks are facing bankruptcy and asking for bailouts world over, the performance of the government-owned banks on bourses on Friday reflected the faith of the investors in them.

At present, banks are globally facing a complete lack of confidence from investors and other banks, which in turn is hitting their share prices. And the lack of trust in them by fellows bank has created a liquidity crisis in the financial system. In this backdrop, the performance of some of the government-owned banks in suggest the strength of the Indian financial market. However, a number of other PSUs like PNB, Bank of Baroda and Bank of India has fallen in the range of 1.5% and 6%. But, the fall much lower than the private sector banks.

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