HDFC Bank chief Aditya Puri in Barron’s list of Top 30 Global CEOs

Largest private lender HDFC Bank's Managing Director Aditya Puri has been named in Barron's list of Top 30 Global CEOs. The international publication has included Puri in this prestigious list for the fourth consecutive year. This Barron's list looks at a history of strong leadership while compiling its list. It screens the S&P 500 index and 250 largest non-U.S. companies and evaluates them on factors such as revenue, earnings growth, and share-price performance over a five-year period. It also moves about a third of its previous year’s picks off the list to feature newcomers. 

The magazine in Puri's profile said, "He turned a start-up into a banking giant, and helped bring Indians into the modern financial era. Even after 24 years at the helm, Puri, 67, elicits effusive praise from investors, with descriptions ranging from “one of the most impressive CEOs we have come across” to a “great man who has built a great bank.”

It added, "The career banker methodically built a start-up into India’s second-largest private-sector bank by market value. He reliably minted money by serving the country’s burgeoning middle class, and avoided pitfalls like the bad corporate loans and governance scandals now tripping up rivals."

Puri has been the MD of HDFC Bank since its inception in 1994. During his 24 years at the helm, Puri has created a culture of excellence in the Bank. A great advocate of technology and convenience banking, he is credited with embracing digital banking platforms to change the way banking is done in India. 

Puri has been an instrumental part of the transformation, launching the bank’s ‘Go Digital - Bank Aapki Muthhi Mein’ campaign in December 2014.

This year, the magazine divided the CEOs into three categories: Visionary Founders, Growth Leaders, and Turnaround Experts. 

Puri has been featured in the Growth Leaders category. 

• One-year total return: 25.2%
• Annualized returns (since inception): 24%
• Five-year profit growth: 19.8%
• Market value ($ Bn): 77.6

In its 14th edition, the list of the world's best CEOs includes Jeff Bezos of Amazon; Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway; Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase; Larry Page of Alphabet; Reed Hastings of Netflix; Satya Nadella of Microsoft; and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.

Further, Barron's list said, " Although Puri shuns personal electronic devices and email, he has embraced technology at the bank, using it to tap the country’s millions of unbanked citizens. The goal, he says, is to offer anything related to money, whether for paying bills, securing a mortgage, or investing, at the click of a button, as effortlessly as one downloads movies from Netflix. In this way, he hopes to stay ahead of any Amazon entry into financial services.”