HDFC Bank board finalises Aditya Puri's successor, waits for RBI nod

HDFC Bank on Saturday said its board has finalised three candidates, in order of preference, to succeed CEO and MD Aditya Puri, but did not disclose the names, saying they will be communicated to the RBI. Puri has been the head of the lender since its incorporation 25 years ago and has led it to be the largest and most valuable bank, on the back of a strict hold over asset quality.

It is one of the most coveted jobs in the Indian banking sector and market watchers are keenly awaiting who will be the chosen appointee.

The HDFC Bank board had appointed a search committee and also engaged external headhunters to help it zero in on a candidate.

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"The Board of Directors of the Bank has today (Saturday) finalised the names of three candidates, in the order of preference, for the position of the managing director and chief executive officer (MD & CEO) of the bank," the bank informed the bourses in a statutory filing.

It did not elaborate on who the three were.

A media report in the run up to the board meet had mentioned the names of Sashidhar Jagdishan, Kaizad Bharucha and Sunil Garg as the ones who had made the cut. Jagdishan and Bharucha are internal candidates, while Garg is working with American banking major Citigroup.

Garg is the chief executive of Citi Commercial Bank, while Jagdishan is an additional director who heads the finance, human resources, legal and secretarial functions at HDFC Bank, and Bharucha is an executive director responsible for wholesale banking.

Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank had asked for the appointments of both Jagdishan and Bharucha to be kept in abeyance, asking for the new chief executive to take a call on it.

Puri had recently told reporters that his successor will be announced before April. "...The recommendations are with the search committee and before April, an appropriate person who will take the bank into the future will be announced," he had told reporters over a conference call last month.