Stanchart Chief To Visit India On December 15

Mervyn Davies, the new Standard Chartered chief executive, will be in India on Saturday, December 15. After taking over the hot seat on November 29 in the wake of Rana Talwar's exit, this is Davies's first country visit.

Incidentally, Talwar will be in India next week on his annual holiday.

The new StanChart chief is slated to meet the senior management here, an event which will be webcast to all the branches of the bank across the country.

The visit comes at a time when the market is rife with rumours of a possible sale of a part of the StanChart businesses in this part of the world.

 

Earlier, there were speculations that StanChart was being sold to Citibank which was denied by the StanChart board. In fact, just before he stepped down, Talwar had sent an e-mail to global StanChart employees scotching the speculation.

Davies' India visit is also significant in the context of the bank's changing its reporting structure in India from the country model to the segmented business model.

With this change, the heads of corporate & institutional banking as well as consumer banking of StanChart in India will report to group executive directors of respective businesses in Singapore. However, Jaspal Bindra will continue to be the country head.

Sources said with the reporting structure change there also could be some changes in the management level.

The post of the head of consumer banking has been lying vacant after Harpal Dugal quit the post a few months back. Vishu Ramchandran, StanChart's south-east Asia head, is temporarily heading the division. The sources said Ramchandran was likely to continue in this post for the time being till a successor is identified for Dugal.