Kochhar wants to take ICICI to top slot

She would neither like to be adventurous nor conservative, but ICICI Bank's CEO-designate Chanda Kochhar today said her endeavour would be to take the bank to the top slot in two years.

"My definition of the biggest could be many. You don't have to always be big in size. I would look at big in terms of efficiency, productivity and customer satisfaction. My endeavour would be take us to that slot (from No.2 right now to the top)," she told PTI after being named to succeed K V Kamath on April 30, next year.

Asked if she could make ICICI Bank the most profitable in the next two years, she said: "Endeavour would be that. I don't want to make any claim... I don't want to make any forward looking statement." On the criticism by PNB CMD K C Chakrabarty that private banks' adventurism was hurting them, Kochhar retorted: "I would say that each step that we took was well thought out in the given environment and was for long-term."

"In the intermediate time if the environment changes, it just brings about some of its challenges and these challenges impact those people more who have taken more steps."

She said fundamentally the steps taken by ICICI Bank, which was the target of a rumour campaign that cast doubts about its financial health in September causing huge erosion in share prices, are still sound and were taken on the basis of a whole lot of analysis and thinking.

On whether the bank's adverturism would give way to conservatism that typifies the Indian banking system, Kochhar, the youngest woman CEO among domestic banks, said: "I would place myself neither on adventurism nor on conservatism. If you have to use the term, I would place myself on to cautious optimism... That is you have to be very balanced."