Rana Kapoor, co-founder of Yes Bank, has hung up his boots as the managing director & CEO of the private lender.
Kapoor on Thursday demitted office as the MD & CEO of the bank after the RBI had in September last year asked him to leave office by January 31. The board had sought an extension of his tenure till September 2019, but the RBI did not agree.
In an announcement on Thursday, the private lender said the RBI had approved the appointment of Ajai Kumar, who has been its non-executive, non-independent director since 2016, as the interim MD and CEO for a month till Ravneet Singh Gill from Deutsche Bank India takes over from March 1.
Kapoor had launched the bank along with his late brother-in-law Ashok Kapur in 2004. Before setting up the bank, he was the CEO and managing director and main managing partner of Rabo India Finance Pvt Ltd. He then sold his shareholdings to Rabobank, Netherlands, in early 2003.
Kapur was killed in the 2008 terrorist attack following which there was a feud between Rana Kapoor and Ashok Kapur’s wife Madhu Kapur that played out in courts.
However, earlier this week, these two promoter groups reached a truce by agreeing to appoint one non-independent director each on the board.
Kapoor is credited with making Yes Bank the fifth largest private bank with a loan book of over Rs 2.43 lakh crore and a deposit base of Rs 2.22 lakh crore as of December 2018. The bank had a gross NPA of 2.10 per cent.
Kapoor has also been successful in pushing up the bank’s low cost current and saving account deposits (CASA). As on December 31, 2018, while the CASA ratio stood at 33.3 per cent, these accounts grew almost 14 per cent over the same period last year.
Yes Bank had recently said Gill would take charge by March 1. The board of the lender now consists of nine directors. These include part-time chairman Brahm Dutt, independent director Mukesh Sabharwal, non-executive non-independent director Subhash Chander Kalia and independent director Pratima Sheorey and interim MD & CEO Ajai Kumar.
Uttam Prakash Agarwal, T.S. Vijayan, Maheswar Sahu and Anil Jaggia are the additional (independent) directors.
