There are many ways to describe ICICI Bank CEO and managing director Kundapur Vaman Kamath, but boring is definitely not one of them.
The gentle giant, who will hang his boots on April 30, 2009, will be remembered for making interest rates sound interesting and the otherwise 'boring' banking profession cool.
Kamath's success is the envy of bankers everywhere, but his feat of taking a small bank and turning it into the country's second largest lender is hard to match.
It was no big surprise that Kamath, born in Mangalore in the December of 1947, chose banking as his profession. Mangaloreans have made a name for themselves in this field, with at least five banks founded by people from the region.
But IIM-educated Kamath ventured beyond where his predecessors treaded and made access to credit a real possibility for customers from different walks of life.
After graduating from IIM-Ahmedabad in 1971, he joined the erstwhile Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India in the project finance division and dabbled in leasing, venture capital and credit rating fields.
In 1998, he moved to the Asian Development Bank, Manila, where he worked on many projects in developing countries before returning to ICICI as its Managing Director and CEO in 1996.
He presided over the expansion of ICICI Bank, which grew rapidly through a series of acquisition in the late 90s. In a country where the only banker people generally remember without difficulty is the Reserve Bank Governor, Kamath made a mark for himself.
Kamath is credited with introducing ATM cards on a large-scale and taking banking online -- which later fetched him the 'Most e-savvy CEO' among Asian Banks recognition from the Asian Banker Journal.
Asian Business Leader of the Year, Finance Man of the Year and many other awards were conferred on Kamath to celebrate his accomplishment in making retail credit easily available.
In 2005, this father of two was called in to do the trouble-shooting after differences of opinion arose between Ambani brothers -- Mukesh and Anil. It was Kamath who formulated a plan to split the Reliance business empire between the brothers.
He worked with Ambani family matriarch Kokilaben to decide which businesses would be run by whom. In December of the same year, he took ICICI Bank public. The bank also became the first Indian financial institution that was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
The penultimate year of his tenure as ICICI Bank chief saw Kamath battling rumours about the financial health of his institution. The rumours displaced ICICI Bank as the most valued financial institution of the country in terms of market capitalisation, but Kamath prove that the bank was capable of absorbing losses, if any, from its exposure to derivative products in overseas markets.
Besides guiding the bank, Kamath has also been showing the way forward to the industry in his capacity as president of the Confederation of Indian Industry. He is also on the governing boards of various educational institutes, including his alma matter IIM-A.
