BS People: Sonjoy Chatterjee

Drummer's new beat

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Sonjoy Chatterjee enjoys playing drums for rock music, but he may have to give his favourite pastime a break, for some time at least. The 42-year-old ace banker has just been named the India chairman of global investment banking major Goldman Sachs, which has become yet another overseas bank to sign up a local rainmaker to drive its fortunes in India. Some other global banks with local chiefs in the country are JPMorgan, headed by Kalpana Morparia; Morgan Stanley, headed by PJ Nayak; and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, headed by Kaku Nakhate.

Chatterjee, who has a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a master’s in business administration from IIM, Bangalore, joined Goldman Sachs in April last year after a 16-year career at ICICI Bank, where he served as an executive director on the board, with responsibility for corporate and investment banking, project finance, government banking and international banking businesses.

His rise within the bank he joined in 1994 in Kolkata was indeed meteoric and much of it was due to his mentor K V Kamath, now ICICI Bank’s non-executive chairman. ICICI Bank observers say Kamath spotted him as a huge talent when Chatterjee was the head of strategic support in the office of the group CEO of eICICI during 1998-2000, when the bank transformed itself from a development financial institution to a universal banking group with interests in banking, insurance, private equity and asset management.

The results followed soon. In 2002, when nobody knew Chatterjee, Kamath chose him to set up ICICI Bank’s first overseas subsidiary in the UK. What Chatterjee did obviously pleased his mentor, as six years later, he got elevated to lead ICICI Bank’s crucial corporate banking functions.

Goldman Sachs, which set up its Indian operations in December 2006 after exiting the 10-year-old joint venture with Kotak Mahindra Group, now has investment banking, offshore asset management, equity trading and sales, fixed income securities and research services in the country. The company has also deployed more than $2 billion in capital since 2006 through private equity and other investments. So, with Chatterjee’s hands full, the drums will have to wait.