Amid the ongoing controversy of allegations against CEO Chanda Kochhar, ICICI bank appointed Sandeep Bakhshi as its Chief Operating Officer (COO). Bakhshi will the handling the duties of Chanda Kochhar, who will be on a long leave until the independent enquiry against her led by former Supreme Court judge BN Srikrishna concludes. Kochhar is involved in an alleged allegation of ‘conflict of interest’ and ‘quid pro quo’ in a previous deal with Videocon group.
Sandeep Bakhshi is a veteran employee of the bank who is also the Managing Director & CEO of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company. Below are some of the others things to know about new ICICI COO.
- Bakhshi completed his degree in mechanical engineering from Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh. He has a post-graduate degree in management from Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur.
- Bakhshi started his first job at a computer marketing company ORG Systems, in 1983.
- He joined ICICI in 1986 as an officer in the operations department in the Northern Zonal office, Delhi. His duties included business development, project appraisals, project monitoring and business re-structuring.
- He has been the MD and CEO of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited since 2010, which is a subsidiary of ICICI Bank Ltd.
- Bakhshi had also served as the MD and CEO of ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Limited, from March, 2007 to April, 2009.
- He likes watching vintage Bollywood films and prefers to listen old Hindi songs. Veteran singers SD Burman, OP Nayyar and Madan Mohan are among his favourite singers.
- Bakhshi has a lot of fascination towards wildlife and he once admitted during an interview to a leading daily that he wanted to spend a lot of time outside of normal life in forests.
- He also cleared National Defence Academy tests but did not pursue it.