Vaghul may pass on baton to Kamath at ICICI Bank

After 24 years at the helm, Narayan Vaghul, the non-executive chairman of ICICI Bank, will call it a day in March next year.

His protégé and the current Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director K V Kamath is likely to step into Vaghul’s shoes after his term ends in April.

Kamath’s elevation will hot up the race for the CEO’s post, with the current joint managing director and chief financial officer Chanda Kochar being the front runner. With Kamath busy with his responsibilities as the President of the Confederation of Indian Industry, Kochhar has been managing the day-to-day affairs at the bank in recent months.

While Nachiket Mor has moved to ICICI Foundation, the names of the bank’s executive directors Sonjoy Chatterjee, V Vaidyanathan and Madhabi Puri-Buch have also done the rounds for the CEO’s job. The others whose names have been discussed include ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Managing Director Shikha Sharma.

In 1985, Vaghul was appointed Chairman of the then Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI) after a four-year stint as Bank of India’s Chairman and Managing Director.

At 44, when he took charge of Bank of India, Vaghul became one of the youngest chiefs of a nationalised bank.

Having started with State Bank of India, he rose through the ranks to head the bank’s human resources development function and moved to Central Bank of India as executive director, where he had a two year stint.

Kamath, who was picked by Vaghul to head ICICI in 1996, has successfully transformed the project finance entity into a retail finance powerhouse. Now, retail accounts for about 60 per cent of the bank’s assets.

Kamath has a degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in business administration from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He started his career in 1971 at ICICI.