ICICI Bank restructures board

ICICI Bank on Tuesday restructured its brass, elevating senior general manager V Vaidyanathan to the rank of executive director responsible for retail banking. Vaidyanathan will report to KV Kamath, managing director and CEO of the bank.

Chanda Kochhar, deputy managing director responsible for corporate banking, has been given additional charge of international banking, while Nachiket Mor, another deputy managing director, will continue to be responsible for rural banking and global principal investments and trading.

Lalita Gupte, joint managing director overseeing the bank's international operations will retire on October 31, after serving in the financial services group for 35 years.

In a parallel development, Bhargava Dasgupta, senior general manager and head of the international banking group, is being shifted to the bank's life insurance joint venture, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company.

ICICI Bank executives said Dasgupta was being appointed as an executive director of ICICI Prudential Life to further strengthen the top management of the company. Shikha Sharma heads the life insurance venture.

The bank is also creating a new management grade for key corporate functions to enable the management to have a group-wide view.

The bank's Chief Financial Officer Vishakha Mulye will now be the group CFO, K Ramkumar will be the group's chief human resources officer and Pravir Vohra the group's chief technology officer. Madhabi Puri-Buch, head of operations at the bank, will now also be the group corporate brand officer.

Vaidyanathan, who joined ICICI Bank in 2000, has seen the fastest rise to become a member of the board of the country's second-largest bank. He had joined ICICI Bank in 2000. All other whole-time directors on ICICI Bank's board were elevated to board positions after around 10 years of service.

Vaidyanathan, along with Chanda Kochhar, spearheaded the bank's retail foray to make it the country's biggest retail bank in a very short time. The retail loan assets of the bank at Rs 1,07,679 crore (Rs 1076.79 billion) on September 30 constitute about 66 per cent of its total customer assets.