MUMBAI : Kalpana Morparia, chairman, South and Southeast Asia, JPMorgan, has announced her desire to retire from the American bank, after more than a decade at the helm. She will stay on with the bank till the end of the first quarter of fiscal year 2021 and oversee her succession.
Leo Puri, who was the managing director and chief executive of UTI Mutual Fund, will take charge as the new chairman of South and Southeast Asia of JPMorgan. Puri had joined the struggling asset management company (AMC) in 2013 from Warburg Pincus India, where he was the managing director. Puri stepped down from the AMC in 2018 after domestic investors State Bank of India (SBI), Life Insurance Corp. of India, Punjab National Bank and Bank of Baroda, locked horns with the single largest investor, the US’s T Rowe Price.
At JPMorgan, Puri will be supported by Murli Maiya, who will take charge as the new chief executive officer. Maiya, who has 26 years of experience at JPMorgan, will lead the strategic development of the South Asia wing, while focusing on global investment banking, the bank said. Madhav Kalyan, who is currently the CEO of JPMorgan Chase Bank India, will now assume the role of the senior country officer of JPMorgan India.
Morparia’s retirement marks the completion of a 45-year stint in the financial services industry. She had started her career with the erstwhile Industrial Credit and Investment Corp. of India Ltd in 1975, and was elevated to its board of directors in 2001. Her transition from being a corporate lawyer to a corporate leader happened during the leadership of K.V. Kamath, when she was asked to head the treasury department in 1996.
Morparia was the public face of ICICI Bank and was responsible for building the group’s diversified financial services. She was involved in the listing of ICICI Bank on the New York Stock Exchange in 2000. Besides overseeing the reverse merger of ICICI with ICICI Bank in 2002, she was also closely associated with the restructuring of Dabhol Power plant in 2004-05. Morparia retired from the board of directors of ICICI Bank in 2007 as its joint managing director.
Just when Morparia was thinking of hanging up her boots after 33 years at ICICI Bank, she got an offer to head the India operations at JPMorgan. At the foreign bank, she was in charge of each of the firm’s lines of business, including investment banking, asset management, treasury services and principal investment management. She was also responsible for service groups operating in India, including those handling global research, finance, technology and operations.
Morparia is the latest among the senior-most women bankers to step down from their positions in the banking industry.
Her peer Shikha Sharma stepped down as the managing director and chief executive officer (CEO) of Axis Bank in 2018. Chanda Kochhar suffered an ignominious exit as the CEO of ICICI Bank the same year amid allegations of loans for favours and conflict of interest. Arundhati Bhattacharya, the chairperson of SBI stepped down in 2017.
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