Like some of his cricketing heroes, Deepak Parekh, 77, has played a long innings with style, having joined HDFC as a 33-year-old in 1978. Yet, it was a poignant moment when the HDFC chairman said in a matter-of-fact way on Monday that he will step aside once the proposed merger of HDFC into HDFC Bank is consummated in 12-18 months.
Some of HDFC’s shareholders, however, did think a couple of years ago that he should have curtailed his innings a bit and drawn lessons from his favourite cricketer, Sunil Gavaskar who chose to retire from the game before questions about “when” started surfacing. This was evident when Parekh, who was 74 at the time, managed to get re-appointment to the HDFC board only after a laser thin majority in the voting on a special resolution. He needed a minimum 75% votes; what he managed to get is 75.14%. Apart from the age factor, one of the problems of these shareholders was that Parekh “serves on a total of more than six public company boards” and would not be able to “do justice” to his role as HDFC chairman.
But that would be an unkind way of looking at Parekh’s career. For, the impact of his work has gone much beyond the financial sector alone. Let’s look at HDFC first. Fifty-five years ago, his uncle Hasmukh Thakordas Parekh set up HDFC Ltd, which sought to help the average Indian buy a home. It was his uncle’s insistence that made Parekh leave his cushy job at Chase Manhattan in New York to join HDFC as a deputy general manager with a 50 per cent salary cut. The rest, as they say, is history.
Parekh steered HDFC’s growth in stature and strength through a steadfast focus on sound values such as integrity, transparency and professionalism. He became executive chairman of HDFC in 1993 after transforming the institution into a financial conglomerate with presence in banking, asset management, insurance, real estate venture fund and education finance.
No one would dispute Parekh’s uncompromised integrity and conviction to do everything correctly. He has the habit of gifting miniature yellow signboards to colleagues and business associates, which has “compliance” written on it, with a sketch of a slippery slope below it. It’s perhaps for this that young professionals often turn to him for advice when they have a doubt. Every week, he devotes time for young guns who often pick his brains on a variety of subjects.
These very qualities made him the go-to person, be it for mentoring, counsel or crisis-solving. Though it has waned somewhat in recent years, he once earned the sobriquet of the government’s crisis manager, of which salvaging Satyam Computers is the prime example.
For a man who once criticised bureaucrats by saying “in India, if you don’t want to commit, set up a committee,” Parekh did not mind having a virtual monopoly on memberships to key committees — the Malhotra committee on insurance reforms and the Narasimhan committee on banking reforms. During the rule of the previous National Democratic Alliance government, Parekh not only led the rescue plan for UTI but also played a critical role on a unified licensing regime for telecom.
Parekh has two pilgrimages a year: One to Tirupati and the other to the Wimbledon lawns to watch, over strawberry and cream, the world’s best tennis players in action. Retirement may also perhaps help him play more Bridge. But knowing the man, these would remain just pastimes as Parekh, the mentor, can never walk into the sunset.
