HDFC Bank board finalises Aditya Puri's successor, waits for RBI nod

It is one of the most coveted jobs in the Indian banking sector and market watchers are keenly awaiting who will be the chosen appointee.

The board of India’s largest private sector lender, HDFC Bank, on Saturday decided on the best-suited candidates to succeed its chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director (MD), Aditya Puri, and their names would be submitted to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Puri has been the head of the bank since its incorporation 25 years ago and had led it to be the largest and most valuable bank, on the back of a strict hold over asset quality.

HDFC Bank board had appointed a search committee and also engaged external headhunters to help it find the candidate.

“The board of directors of the bank has today (Saturday) finalised the names of three candidates, in the order of preference, for the position of the managing director and chief executive officer (MD & CEO) of the bank,” the bank informed the bourses in a statutory filing.

The intimation did not elaborate on who the three were. A media report in the run-up to the board meet on Saturday had said the names of Sashidhar Jagdishan, Kaizad Bharucha and Sunil Garg were the ones to have made the cut.

Jagdishan and Bharucha are the internal candidates and have been serving the bank for many years each, while Garg is working with the American bank, Citi, at present.

Meanwhile, the bank also informed that Jagdishan and Bhavesh Zaveri, who are in charge of operations, have resigned as additional directors, following instructions from the RBI to keep their appointments in abeyance till a new MD and CEO takes charge.

Both of them submitted their resignations from the post of additional directors and the bank’s board has accepted the same, the lender said.

Garg is the chief executive of Citi Commercial Bank, while Jagdishan is an additional director who heads the finance, human resources, legal and secretarial functions, and Bharucha is an executive director responsible for wholesale banking

Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank had asked for the appointments of both Jagdishan and Bharucha to be kept in abeyance, asking for the new chief executive to take a call on it.

Puri had recently told reporters that his successor will be announced before April. "...the recommendations are with the search committee and before April, an appropriate person who will take the bank into the future will be announced," he had told reporters over a conference call last month.