Madhukar Is United Bank Chairman

Public sector United Bank of India will get a new head next week, with the present chairman and managing director of State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, S Madhukar, taking over as UBI's chairman and managing director on July 18.

UBI has been headless since April 2, when Biswajit Choudhury was denied an extension. The present executive director and acting chairman G Sundaravadivel is also due to retire in August.

S Madhukar joined the State Bank of India officers cadre in July 1967. He was promoted to manager in 1970 and branch manager in 1975, with a stint as manager commercial at Bahrain. He later served in Mauritius for six years from 1990, before rejoining as general manager of SBI Capital Markets for three months in 1997. He was subsequently SBI's general manager-commercial in 1997 and chief general manager at New Delhi for three years before being elevated to the managing director's post in March 2000.

 

State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur is a subsidiary of State Bank of India and is a relatively small bank compared with United Bank of India. Madhukar have a challenging task ahead in UBI, which has huge non-performing assets and a lopsided manpower structure following the implementation of voluntary retirement scheme. The unions at the bank are resisting transfer and redistribution of manpower. Further, the bank has to clear Rs 88 crore arrears to its staff by the end of the next year.