Former SBI executives appointed as bad bank CEO and chairman

MUMBAI: The National Assets Reconstruction Company Ltd (NARCL) on Tuesday said it on-boarded former State Bank of India (SBI) official Natarajan Sundar as its managing director and chief executive on 30 May.

Sundar was an SBI employee for over 37 years and retired on 30 April as deputy managing director and the bank’s chief credit officer. He has experience in corporate banking policies and products, and had a fairly long stint in SBI’s mid, large corporate group as well as in project finance.

The statement said Sundar was selected through a competitive selection process through an open advertisement and was interviewed in April by a panel consisting of senior bankers from both public and private sector.

“After his name was recommended for the position by NARCL board, the fit and proper approval was granted by RBI on 24 May. The incumbent chief executive Padmakumar Nair who was on secondment from SBI has since been repatriated to the parent bank,” it said.

NARCL has also appointed Karnam Sekar as an independent director and non-executive chairman of the board. Sekar was the chief executive of Indian Overseas Bank from July 2019 to June 2020, prior to which he was the head of Dena Bank from September 2018 until its merger in April 2019. Sekar was a deputy managing director and the chief credit officer of SBI before he moved to erstwhile Dena Bank.

As per the statement, NARCL has also appointed Malvika Sinha, retired executive director of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), as an independent director. That apart, the NARCL board now has five nominee directors from shareholder banks and one more independent director is expected to join the board shortly.

NARCL’s shareholders include 15 Indian banks, with Canara Bank acting as the sponsor bank.

To be sure, the bad bank has missed its 31 March deadline to acquire the first tranche of toxic assets because of procedural delays. In January, the bad bank received all regulatory approvals and SBI chairman Dinesh Khara had announced that lenders plan to transfer at least ₹50,000 crore of toxic assets to it by 31 March.