HDFC Bank has reconstituted the search panel instituted to find a successor to Aditya Puri, the MD and CEO, the private sector lender informed the bourses on Wednesday.
Keki Mistry has been replaced by Renu Karnad of the bank’s parent HDFC in the search panel. Mistry leaves the board of the bank after completing eight consecutive years as director – the maximum tenure that regulation allows.
Highest-paid banker
Puri, who built HDFC Bank from scratch since its inception in 1994 and made it the second-largest lender with assets of more than ₹9-lakh crore, is the highest-paid banker in the country and is retiring on October 26. Puri’s succession is being keenly watched by the industry as the new person will have to fill in a very large shoe, given the way Puri has built the bank that commands the highest premium among the banking stocks across the world and also the best asset quality among domestic lenders.
Speculation is intense on whether the bank will pick an internal or external candidate.
On November 28, 2019, the bank had set up a six-member panel to find a successor to Puri who turns 70 on October 26. Weeks into the appointment of the search panel, the bank had roped in international headhunting firm, Egon Zehnder, to assist the panel identify the right candidate.
The reconstituted search panel drops Keki Mistry, representing the parent HDFC, and is being replaced by Renu Karnad of the largest mortgage lender, the bank informed the exchanges this evening.
The filing attributed the exclusion of Mistry, who is the Vice-Chairman, MD and CEO of HDFC, to “the cessation of his (Mistry’s) directorship from the board of the bank and Karnad’s appointment as additional non-executive director on the board of the bank”.
Aditya Puri will continue to act as advisor to the search committee, a position he held in the original panel as well, the filing said.