Barclays Plc names new CEO, COO in reshuffle of key India business

Pramod Kumar will be the new Chief Executive Officer and Suneeta Shetty from HSBC Holdings Plc will be Chief Operating Officer

By Preeti Singh

Barclays Plc named new executives to its top management in India, a major overseas market for the lender. 

Pramod Kumar will be the new Chief Executive Officer, replacing Ram Gopal who is retiring after leading the bank in the country for nearly six years, according to people familiar with the matter. The British bank also hired Suneeta Shetty from HSBC Holdings Plc as its India Chief Operating Officer, the people said, asking not to be identified as the developments are not public yet. 

These changes are happening in one of the most important overseas markets for Barclays. Among Barclays’ global units, India ranked fourth by revenue last year, trailing only the UK, US and Ireland. The firm’s turnover in India has more than tripled in almost 10 years, outshining the performance of other key markets in Asia like Singapore or Hong Kong. The India business, which also includes corporate and private banking, was more than twice the size of Singapore’s and Japan’s last year.

A Mumbai-based spokesperson for Barclays declined to comment, when asked by Bloomberg News about the management moves. 

New Executives
 

Kumar joined Barclays almost 12 years ago and is currently its head of banking under its investment bank division in the country, according to his LinkedIn page. 

Shetty has been at HSBC for more than 17 years, her role as group head of transaction monitoring operations and center director at GSC Krakow in Poland being her most recent position, according to her LinkedIn page.

Barclays’s Asia Pacific head Jaideep Khanna is based in the country, helping to maintain close ties with India’s growing ranks of corporate giants and wealthy. The bank’s revamped India team will have to grapple with intensifying competition from rivals such as HSBC and HDFC Bank Ltd., which are beefing up their local operations, as well as the turmoil surrounding a key client, the Adani group.

The management changes are also the latest in a series of moves made by the bank after several senior executives recently left.

Taranjit Jaswal, India head of corporate banking, has left the firm after eight years to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions, Bloomberg News reported, citing a internal memo earlier this month. Sandeep Das, its head of private clients in the country, has also departed to pursue another opportunity, according to a separate memo. Earlier, Ashish Jhaveri, head of mergers and acquisitions for India, exited the bank to join Jefferies Financial Group Inc., people familiar with the matter had said. 

Barclays hired Nitin Singh as its new private bank head in Asia, with the newly created role based in Mumbai and bringing the India and Singapore operations under him, according to a memo. Vijay Santhanam will take over as corporate banking head and Chintan Thattey was named head of Risk Solutions Group for the country.