RBI names R Gandhi, Ananth Gopalkrishnan addl directors on YES Bank Board

Appointment is for two years; this is Gandhi's second stint in the same capacity

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday appointed R Gandhi and Ananth Narayan Gopalakrishnan as additional directors to the board of private sector lender YES Bank for a period of two years.

This will be R Gandhi’s second stint as an additional director on the YES Bank board. Gandhi, a former deputy governor of RBI, was previously appointed to the YES Bank board as an additional director by the RBI in May 2019 for a period of two years. His term was to expire in May 2021 but earlier this month the central bank superseded the previous board of YES Bank.

Ananth Narayan Gopalakrishnan, an associate professor at SP Jain Institute of Management and Research is an international banking and financial markets expert. He was previously Standard Chartered Bank's regional head of financial markets for ASEAN and South Asia.

The government notifying the YES Bank reconstruction proposed by the RBI had constituted a four-member board wherein Prashant Kumar, the current administrator of the bank, was appointed as the  managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO), and Sunil Mehta, former non-executive chairman of Punjab National Bank, was appointed as the non-executive chairman of the bank.

The other members of the board include Mahesh Krishnamurthy and Atul Bheda as non-executive directors. State Bank of India, the biggest investor in YES Bank via the reconstruction scheme, has nominated Partha Pratim Sengupta and Swaminathan Janakiraman to the YES Bank board.

The newly-constituted board is expected to meet soon.