Govt interviews 2 candidates for SBI managing director post

Selection crucial, as one of them likely to head bank after Chaudhuri retires in September

The government has interviewed Arundhati Bhattacharya and P Pradeep Kumar for the post of managing director in State Bank of India. One of the four managing directors of the bank, Diwakar Gupta, who is also chief financial officer, will retire in July.

While P Pradeep Kumar is one of the deputy managing directors, and looks after the global markets portfolio, Bhattacharya is managing director and chief executive officer of SBI Caps, the merchant banking arm.

While the government appoints managing directors, the bank's chairman is responsible for allocating portfolios.

A search panel headed by the Reserve Bank of India governor conducted the interviews earlier this week. The search panel included Rajiv Takru, secretary, financial services, in the ministry of finance; Anand Sinha, deputy governor of RBI (nominee of the governor) and one professor from an Indian Institute of Management, among others.

The selection for this post is crucial as the selected candidate could well be made chairman of the country's largest bank when Pratip Chaudhuri's two-and-a-half-year term ends in September. While Bhattacharya will have two-and-a-half years of residual service if given the charge after Chaudhuri retires, Pradeep Kumar will have two years.

To be the chairman of SBI, a candidate needs to have a minimum of two years' residual service. Both Bhattacharya and Pradeep Kumar are eligible to become the next chief.

Among the present managing directors, three will retire by April next year and one MD in November 2014. Apart from Gupta, the other three MDs are Hemant Contractor, S Visvanathan and A Krishna Kumar.

According to top SBI officials, the banking behemoth is heading for huge changes in the top management, with as many as seven deputy managing directors and the managing director of one associate bank and one subsidiary (deputy managing director rank) retiring over the next one-and-a-half years, apart from the four managing directors.

The entire public sector banking industry is set to see changes at the top level in the current financial year with nine chairmen and directors post will be vacant. While IDBI Bank's top post has already fell vacant, Manipal-based Syndicate Bank's chairman and managing director MG Sanghvi will retire by month end. Next month, two more south India based bank - Andhra Bank and Corporation Bank - will get new CMD.

The government is yet to appoint a full-time CMD for IDBI Bank. Bank of India's executive director MS Raghavan is likely to get the top job at IDBI Bank.

While Punjab National Bank's ED, SR Bansal is likely to given the charge of Syndicate Bank, Bank of Maharashtra's ED CVR Rajendran may be appointed as head of Andhra Bank. Bank of Baroda's ED SK Jain is likely to be appointed as the CMD as Corporation Bank.