Reports of RBI forcing reassigning of roles baseless: StanChart

Standard Chartered Bank on Wednesday dismissed reports that claimed it was being forced by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to reassign the roles of some of its senior executives in India.

“It has come to our notice that some malicious rumours, involving Standard Chartered and reassigning the roles of some senior people, are doing the rounds. These are also being linked to regulatory pressure on the bank to effect these changes,” the bank said in a statement signed by Neeraj Swaroop, its regional chief executive for India and south Asia. “These rumours are motivated, totally unfounded and completely baseless. There has been no such direction, either in writing or verbal, from any of the regulators," it said.

 

The bank said the new responsibilities assigned to its senior executives were part of “planned career progression moves.”

Incidentally, Swaroop is tipped to be the next chief executive of the bank's Southeast Asian operations. The new role would see him in charge of eight to ten countries, including the bank's key markets like Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore.

In February, the bank had said Arup Roy, the then head of corporate banking in India, relocated to Singapore as managing director of the strategic client coverage business division for India and Africa. Peter Warbanoff, who was the chief risk officer of the bank in India, moved to Hong Kong earlier this year, while Prahlad Shantigram, the global head of mergers and acquisitions, also relocated from India to Singapore.

A section of the media had earlier reported that some of these changes in the bank’s senior management were carried out following pressure from RBI. This was because the foreign lender had failed to comply with regulatory norms in some of its transactions involving the issue of debentures, the mis-selling of derivative products and the funding of Indian companies' foreign acquisitions.

“All executives moving into newer roles are doing so after putting in substantially long stints in their current roles," the bank said, adding it was not unusual for several senior people to change roles in the same year. In the first half of 2008, four members of the bank’s management in India had moved out of the country to take up bigger roles. "In 2011, it is the turn of their successors to move into new and bigger roles," it said.

In the last three years, the bank has seen over 160 people moving abroad to take up new positions and about a third of them were in the mid to senior management levels.