Terrorist attack in the financial capital of the country, Mumbai has left the entire industry in deep shock following which equity, currency, bond and money markets remained closed on Thursday, November 27th.

The banks branches that are located in the areas surrounding terror attacks remained closed for the day. Union Bank of India's branch at Nariman Point was closed as it is very close to Oberoi Hotel, one of the targeted areas. Similarly, HDFC Bank's branch located just behind the Taj Hotel, another spot of the terrorist activity, also remained completely shut.

However other branches of the banks were open but the customer inflow in these branches was much less. In fact the operations at bank branches in the suburbs were held in a normal order and more customers visited the branches in suburban locations as they could not go to South Mumbai. Most branches in the South Mumbai area were also closed earlier than normal.

An official from Axis Bank's branch in Churchgate said, "No customers came in today as most of them use the ATM."

Not only was there a low inflow of customers, even the staff turnout was low. Branches of Bank of Baroda, Axis Bank, and Oriental Bank of Commerce, located around Nariman Point were operating with minimum staff.

An official from Bank of Baroda's Backbay branch said, "We closed the branch by afternoon today, as there was very few staff and just two to three customers came into the branch."

Even the Reserve Bank of India and SEBI were functioning throughout the day but again the customer as well as the staff attendance was very low. The apex body did carry out transactions under the Liquidity Adjustment Facility to support banks in their cash requirements.

According to a statement by RBI, "Settlement of all outstanding transactions will, accordingly, get postponed to the next working day, November 28, 2008. Transactions under Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF) conducted on November 26, 2008 will accordingly be reversed on November 28, 2008."