ICICI Bank was considering barring senior executives who depart for competitors from starting their new jobs within six months of leaving, said a person with knowledge of the matter. The requirement for so-called gardening leave would apply to about 120 employees at the level of joint general manager or above, the person said, declining to be identified because the deliberations are private. ICICI has about 53,000 workers.
ICICI, led by CEO Chandra Kochhar, is bracing for more competition for talent as the Reserve Bank of India prepares to issue new bank licenses for the first time in more than seven years. Religare Enterprises, controlled by billionaire brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Mohan Singh, said in August it might apply for a permit.
At present, Mumbai-based ICICI has a provision that bars employees from decamping for competing financial institutions within six months without the bank’s permission, though that rule had never been implemented, the person said. The provision was introduced for employees who joined the firm after 2000.
Senior bankers who leave ICICI are barred from luring other workers for the first year, the person said. ICICI spokesman Charudatta Deshpande declined to comment.
ICICI will give senior executives who depart the option of paying the bank an unspecified amount of money to avoid having to serve the gardening leave, the person said.
Employee turnover
The rate of employee turnover among junior staff had almost doubled this year to about 15 per cent as an expanding economy bolstered job prospects, the person said. ICICI’s board would review the plan to introduce gardening leave at a meeting later this month, according to the person. Gardening leave is the period between jobs when an employee can’t work for a competitor.
V Vaidyanathan, who was CEO of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, quit in July to join Future Capital Holdings Sonjoy Chatterjee, an executive director at ICICI Bank, departed in April to join Goldman Sachs Group as a managing director and co-CEO for India.
Uday Kotak’s Kotak Mahindra Bank became the first new commercial bank in more than seven years in 2003, and was the first Indian company to turn into a commercial lender.
