RBI okays Sashidhar Jagdishan as Aditya Puri’s successor at HDFC Bank

MUMBAI: The Reserve Bank of India has approved the appointment of Sashidhar Jagdishan as the next managing director of HDFC Bank, succeeding veteran Aditya Puri. A letter to this effect has been sent to BSE by the bank.

ET was the first to report in April that HDFC Bank had identified three people as possible successors to CEO Puri, including two internal candidates, Sashi Jagdishan and Kaizad Bharucha, both executive directors of the bank. Sunil Garg global head of Citi Commercial Bank, had also been shortlisted as the external candidate.

In August last year the bank had reshuffled the role of its top management personnel and named Sashi Jagdishan as a “change agent” and made him the head of all important portfolios of the bank. This was seen as a signal that he might well be the candidate to succeed Puri if the board chooses an internal candidate.


In an interview with ET in February Puri has said that the board acknowledged the contributions of insiders. Puri, who is 69 years old, will complete his term in October 2020.

``I believe that this theory (of favouring insiders) has a lot of merit,’’ said Puri. ``Obviously, we know whoever is within the organisation. If a lot of them have created a $100 billion franchise they must be competent. The board also acknowledges that we have very strong internal candidates. But, there were some people who felt that we should also look at external candidates so that we won’t miss out on anyone.’’

Sashi, as he is called by colleagues, rose as the top choice for the job after Paresh Sukthankar’s sudden exit. Jagdishan has been with the bank since 1996 and is currently responsible for finance, business strategy and the bank’s strategic initiatives.

For Jagdishan, the task will be rather gigantic. The biggest challenge will be maintaining the gold standard that Puri has set for the bank. It is a difficult mix of growth, compliance and risk that Jagdishan currently manoeuvres as the strategic change agent of the private lender.

Jagdishan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from the University of Mumbai and a masters in economics of money, banking and finance from the University of Sheffield, UK. He is also a Chartered Accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

"A major overhang about the CEO and leadership transition gets removed with this announcement,” said Suresh Ganapathy, Associate Director, Macquarie Capital. "In an uncertain environment like this, we believe an internal candidate who is in sync with the outgoing CEO Mr. Puri is the right choice. Sashi comes with a very diverse experience having handled multiple functions in the bank and hence we believe he is the appropriate choice. What we hear from many employees is that Sashi is a hard task master and what is essential is to ensure the stellar execution track record that HDFC Bank has built over the years."